I turned it into a story but the hole in my heart is still there

Last year when I was a guest on Hour of the Wolf I read my 9/11-inspired story Until Forgiveness Comes on the air. Jim Freund liked it so much and liked the radio-y/NPR-esque-ness that he suggested we should record it as a radio play. I am all for that, so I wrote a script and we’ve been slowly, slowly working our way toward making that happen.

Jim will produce, we’ll likely get studio time at WBAI, and the fabulous Andrea Hairston will direct. She has some actors in mind, Jim keeps insisting I should do a part, and I am crossing my fingers for a guest appearance by Margo Adler (the original host of Hour of the Wolf and fancy NPR contributor). But I know we’ll need to bring in a few actors to read, and it would be nice if those actors could be paid. This is the part that’s holding up the works, unfortunately.

I’m hoping to get that all resolved because I would really love to have the play ready to go on next year’s anniversary. Despite the fact that many of us here in NYC are truly Not On about the spectacle that these anniversaries have become, it’s not likely to get any better next year due to the West’s love of base 10. So I’d like to make a small contribution to the conversation that isn’t about politics or publicity.

Somehow the money will emerge. That or we’ll find really excellent actors who don’t mind working for free. Still, I’d rather give everyone involved something for their time.

You can still read Until Forgiveness Comes at Strange Horizons or you can

      listen to the second half
of my appearance on HotW where I read the story then take calls.

I’ll be back on the show next Saturday with my writing group, Altered Fluid. They will be critiquing a story of mine live on the air. At 5am… Yes, there will be a podcast you can download later, but you’ll miss the call-in part!

(x-posted)

Hugo Nominations

First, a reminder. Hugo nominations close this Friday. If you are eligible to nominate, you should. You can nominate if you were a member of last year’s WorldCon or if you are a member of this year’s already. If you don’t know how to nominate, go here.

That said.

There were many fine stories and novels and novelettes and such published last year. I hope that if you read one you liked you will nominate it. Even if you didn’t read every story ever, you should nominate. And, if you are so inclined, I would not object to you nominating one of my stories.

I am not smooth at all, but whatever.

If I were to choose one story that I would ask people to consider it would be Elan Vital from Sybil’s Garage no 6. I personally think it’s the best short story of mine published last year, though I am excessively fond of Enmity and Different Day as well. It’s up to you to make that choice.

Also, I am eligable for Fan Writer. Just so you know.

Now I will stop my shameless plugging and get back to my regularly scheduled programming.

A Review of My Electric Velocipede Story

Oddly, I haven’t seen too many reviews of EV 17/18, which is a sadness! But apparently Tangent Online did a review of the entire issue, including my story Enmity. Check it:

…a cerebral exploration of the creation story, spanning ancient Greek mythology, Christianity, and probably some other sources I haven’t picked up on too.

…Now, my knowledge of classical civilisation is limited at best, so it took a great deal of Wikipedia research even vaguely to understand what was going on here. Poor Eurydice goes from creator of the world, to Adam’s Eve and back again. She dies, lives, creates and destroys, all with little idea of who or what she really is, and by the end of it all I felt just as mixed up as Eurydice herself. In that sense, Bradford did well to carry me through the narrative as well as she did, but there is no real plot to speak of. I think the ‘point’ of this piece is to portray the eternal, cyclical relationship between good and evil, and to demonstrate how it transcends theology.

My intent was less good and evil but women and men. Perhaps I tripped over my own subconscious there.

People often run up against the same issue the reviewer did when it comes to my mythpunkish stories — I pack in a lot of mythology, some recognizable by folks with a passing knowledge, some not. Apparently my target audience consists of people who have not only read a lot of mythology and folklore from various ancient civilizations but who’ve also delved into the cultural forces that shaped those mythologies and, perhaps, have also done some research into how folklore and mythology change as the socio-cultural landscape of a region or a people change.

In other words, me, Veronica Schanoes, and Helen Pilinovsky. It’s a narrow audience.

Still, I’m glad the reviewer liked it despite the confusion. Though I wonder why she objects to the line “Rape is a metaphor. And it also is not”? There’s more to the review, so click over and read the rest. And, if you haven’t read the story yet, it exists online.

grand central station in the style of an egyptian temple

Inspiration

Two years ago today I was listening to an NPR report about the anniversary ceremony that happens every year down at Ground Zero. It was very similar, though more polished, to the first such anniversary memorial which I listened to live on the radio. In 2002 I felt that everything was appropriate. The reading of the names, the ringing of a bell to mark when the planes hit and then when the towers fell, the speeches from various elected and appointed officials, the gathering of the survivors and families of the victims, all of it. It had only been a year, the pain was still shockingly fresh.

But when I listened to the report two years ago I had a very different reaction. Ceremony and ritual intrigue me, and listening to the names and bells and speeches, I was struck by how easily we fell into this ritual with these elements that you can find in ritual and cult in many cultures and many periods in history. Without calling it a ritual, the remembrance of 9/11 became one. What interested me the most was that it also became a particular kind of ritual, one where these survivors and family and friends of those who died were viscerally reliving and recreating that day.

Here is when this moment occurred — mark it, remember it, relive those feelings again. Now here’s where this moment happened — where were you, what were you thinking, what did you feel?  Now this moment, and this next one, until we’ve gone over again and again the details and called up the ghosts and recalled the last words, the last touch, the very moment when your life was sliced into Before and After.

This is powerful magic.

In between 2002 and 2007 I didn’t listen to any other 9/11 ceremonies. I avoided most media on those days and have carefully avoided even being down near Ground Zero as the anniversary approaches. Having lived through it once I was in no hurry to relive it again, even through ritual, which I find comforting. When the anniversary came around again in ’07 I thought it was safe for me to listen to the radio, I thought I had successfully dealt with (read: suppressed) what went on with me that day. 5 minutes of news coverage undid all my walls.

In response, I started writing the story that eventually became Until Forgiveness Comes. That was my ritual.

Last year I was able to listen to the news and watch television without having a complete nervous breakdown. This year my response has been a bit different. YouTube and I have gotten to know each other well over the past week. But the more I process and reflect, I still think that, before or since, I’ve not said anything that articulates my feelings about that day better than the story I wrote.

http://strangehorizons.com/2008/20081117/forgiveness-f.shtml

Enmity Online

No, this is not about online fights.

As many of you know, I have a story in the latest issue of the Hugo award-winning zine Electric Velocipede. The editor asked if he could put my story online in its entirety to tempt people into buying the whole issue. I said yes immediately because I heart having my stories both online and in print.

Today it went live, so you can check out Enmity on the EV website. I hope you enjoy. This was my first Mythpunk story (before I even knew what Mythpunk was!). I was inspired by the stuff I learned in my creation myths class. Like Black Feather, I drew from many different versions of myths and many different myth traditions. It’s pretty cool the connections you can find by just looking for common elements and symbolism.

Two Things Make a WIN

Two Things Make a WIN

These two things have nothing to do with each other, I just happen to be posting about them at the same time.

1 — io9 reviewed Federations and Charlie Jane liked it quite a lot. She had nice things to say about my story specifically:

There are also a few delightfully snarky stories which deconstruct, and in some cases satirize outright, the idea of a civilization made up of civilizations, and these are among the book’s standout stories. … K. Tempest Bradford’s “Different Day” imagines the Earth being contacted by not just one, but three different alien races within the same interstellar group, each with its own agenda.

I think I will make a button that says “delightfully snarky.”

2 — Also, the World Fantasy nominees have been announced and you should just click here to see, because the awesome on this list is very strong. I will call out some things I’m particularly happy to see: Filter House, Paper Cities, and “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”. Yay for Nisi and Ekaterina and Catherynne, but they are not the only ones. The special awards pro and non-pro have some really, really extraordinary names competing.

This ballot is something to get excited about, unlike certain others I could name.

And… that’s it!

People Saying Stuff About My Fiction

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been made aware of several people saying things about my stories but haven’t had the time to mention it here due to some other stuff taking up my time. Heh. Anyway, here it all is in simple list form.

  • SFScope’s Mark L. Blackman attended the NYRSF Federations reading on July 7th and gave his impressions of the stories and the readers. I have to say, he picked what has to be the worst picture of me, ever! I look like I just discovered a bug in my copy of the antho. :)
    • After a break, next up was K. Tempest Bradford, whose breezily snarky offering, “Different Day”, was a reaction to the common premises that alien worlds have one culture/one global government and that, invariably, they “come to America first.” She cleverly posits rival alien tribes, just as mutually hostile as our contemporary nations, visiting and negotiating with other parts of the world (like Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama), though her present-day biases and digs limit the story’s shelf-life.
  • Tom Crosshill reviewed Sybil’s Garage No. 6.
    • “Elan Vital” by K. Tempest Bradford. A story of dealing with loss, of holding on, and of letting go. The execution is superb, even if the premise feels somewhat familiar (I won’t reveal it here, except to say that this story too is about the undead, although to call it a zombie story would hardly be accurate.) At its core is a parent-child relationship, which as you will see becomes a recurring theme in this issue.
  • Sam Tomaino at SFRevu made me go “squee!”
    • K. Tempest Bradford gives us what, I think, is the best story in the issue with “Elan Vital”. … This is one you won’t forget soon.

There’s more to that last review but it’s a bit spoilery. Obviously you should read the story right now so you can then read the whole review ;)

Torchwood: Children of the Earth

Torchwood: Children of the Earth

It’s hard, sometimes, being a Torchwood fan. It’s hard loving a show that has such obvious flaws. That suffers so many episodes with a good or halfway decent premise to fall apart in the last 5 – 15 minutes. That suffers some more than occasional bouts of bad acting. That suffers Burn Gorman to be presented as a desirable sexual partner for either men or women.

It’s hard being a Torchwood fan.

Long ago I had to admit that I love Torchwood the way lots of people love fanfiction. After all, the show is essentially Doctor Who fanfiction (spinoff is such a polite term). And, like fanfiction, I’m willing to put up with a lot of crap as long as my kink is massaged. My kink is, of course, Captain Jack Harkness.

Over time I also became quite a fan of Miss Toshiko Sato, though her character was badly used through the whole of her two series. And Ianto, of course — mainly because he was snogging Jack.

As long as any one episode contained Jack, Jack snogging Ianto, and Toshiko being awesome, I was mostly happy. But man, oh man, I wished for more. I wished for plots that held together and deep emotional impact and for Gwen not to suck so much donkey balls and for the show in general to just really take chances and change the game.

I clapped very hard for this. Harder than I clapped for Tinkerbell. And my wish came true.

Torchwood: Children of the Earth is so good, so phenomenal, and so crunchy that it truly transcends its fanfiction/spinoff standing and becomes one of the best television events I’ve witnessed in the past several years.

It’s sad that we only got five episodes this series, but Russel T. Davies utilized them well, delivering a plot arc that kept the tension up without resorting to cheap tricks. In “Day One”, children all over the world freeze at the exact same moment. Just freeze. Then, a few minutes later, continue on as if nothing’s happened. That afternoon it happens again, but this time the children all speak in unison: “We Are Coming.” It’s terrifying in its simplicity and in the delivery. All children everywhere saying the same thing at the same time.

Of course the Torchwood team goes into action trying to figure it all out. But they quickly discover that their biggest obstacle and most immediate threat isn’t the aliens, it’s the British government. We find out exactly why over the course of the first three days.

I won’t go spoilerific on you yet (I have much analysis and questions, but I’ll save that for after the final episode has been aired in the US), but I will say that the tension, mystery, excitement and stuff that makes you cry is very well-balanced throughout the series.

One note I will make is that I was pleasantly surprised to discover about halfway through “Day Two” that I wasn’t as annoyed and chafed by Gwen or Rhys as I usually am. In fact, I thought Gwen was really awesome in this series. She didn’t once make me wish she had died instead of Tosh. I didn’t once want to throw her out of the airlock whenever there was a scene with her and Jack or her and Jack and Rhys all together. This is a major accomplishment for Torchwood, I think. And I’m not sure who to attribute the credit to.

I could be Eve Myles, who is a fine actress, and who is not at fault for Gwen horridness in Series 1 and 2. It could be Russel T. Davies, who just might have a better handle on writing the character than Chris Chibnall ever did. He wasn’t responsible for all of Torchwood’s previous episodes, but he was in charge of the series, and thus the writers probably took his cues more often than not. Maybe it was just that there was no time in this series for the usual stupid love triangle crap someone shoehorned into previous series. That’s fine with me. Series 4 writers please take note: this is the Gwen we should have had all along. Let’s keep her, please.

Torchwood: Children of the Earth is the best series to date. I hope its true that we’ll get a Series 4 someday, because if the show keeps going in this vein it may surpass the one that birthed it. Fanfiction rules!

New Reviews of Sybil’s Garage 6

New Reviews of Sybil's Garage 6

Charles Tan has a short review of SG6 wherein he mentions my story as one of his favorites:

“Elan Vital” by K. Tempest Bradford manages to cram a lot in this relatively short piece. While the science fiction aspects and ramifications might appeal to genre readers, what drew me to this story is how Bradford attaches a human component to the narrative and everything else grows out of that. Her protagonist is not only sympathetic but her unique situation could only have been pulled off in the medium of prose. For example, if this were a comic or a TV episode, part of the tension would have been tipped off too early, and a pivotal scene would have lost much of its momentum. But as it is, the chronology is just right, and Bradford crafts a story with emotional resonance.

Fantasy Magazine also gave us an awesome review!