Tag Archives: Fiction

What’s in Spoon Knife 3?

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Spoon Knife is Autonomous Press’ annual anthology of original stories by queer and/or neurodivergent authors. Spoon Knife accepts short fiction of any genre, plus memoir and the occasional poem. Each volume of Spoon Knife has a different team of editors and a different theme.

The 2018 Autumn Equinox saw the publication of Spoon Knife 3: Incursions, edited by Nick Walker and Andrew M. Reichart (who are also the co-creators of the Weird Luck stories, a growing body of interconnected speculative fiction tales).

So, what’s in Spoon Knife 3? Twenty unique and wonderfully strange pieces by twenty authors representing three generations of queer and neurodivergent literary talent. Let’s take a walk through the table of contents and see what each piece is about…

The Bob Show, by Jeff Baker (fiction)
A fugitive hiding out at his eccentric brother’s home discovers his brother’s TV picks up shows from another reality.

Future Dive, by Alyssa Gonzalez (fiction)
A hilarious but all-too-plausible glimpse of a future dominated by the gig economy.

9-5, by Eliza Redwood (poetry)
A short poem about soul-deadening office jobs.

A Twentieth-Century Comedy of Manners, by Old Cutter John (memoir)
An autistic software designer creates an unintentional disturbance in a corporate hierarchy.

Only Strawberries Don’t Have Fathers, by Judy Grahn (fiction)
Released from a psych ward and hired as a gardner, a sensitive soul becomes witness to the evolving relationships within a family of humans and a family of cats.

Stag, by RL Mosswood (fiction)
A depressed man is revitalized by an erotic encounter with the supernatural.

Life on Mars, by B. Allen (memoir)
A childhood suicide attempt leads to a revelation.

Black Dogs, Night Terrors, and Lights in the Sky, by Sean Craven (memoir)
How do you conduct yourself in the world, when your world is full of monsters and weird visitations?

The Trumpet Sounds, by Alexeigynaix (memoir)
How does one make sense of an encounter with a Mystery too big to fit within the bounds of language and rationality?

Vigilance, by Mike Jung (fiction)
An autistic superhero faces a world-destroying cosmic force.

Spacetime Dialectic, by N.I. Nicholson (poetry)
When you look in the mirror and catch a glimpse of an alternate version of yourself looking back at you, it can lead to some interesting dialogue.

Kill Your Darlings, by Verity Reynolds (fiction)
An alien secret agent, stalking a historical figure in an alternate timeline, learns that her mission has some unforseen complications.

B3: Or, How an Autistic Fixation from the Past Blew the Lid Off My Future, by Andee Joyce (memoir)
A fascination with an old Top 40 song sparks a life-changing creative awakening.

Who Is Allowed? by Alyssa Hillary (poetry)
Being autistic in academia means navigating a system that’s determined to exclude you.

Unworldly Love, by Steve Silberman (memoir)
A gay writer’s memoir of sexual awakening.

The New World, by Melanie Bell (fiction)
In a utopian culture of scholars without gender or sexuality, the gender and sexuality of outsiders becomes a controversial topic of study.

Heat Producing Entities, by Dora M. Raymaker (fiction)
Two young thieves from very different backgrounds have to figure out how to deal with each other when they both go after the same item.

Space Pirate Stowaway, by Andrew M. Reichart (fiction)
A powerful being trapped in the form of a cat stows away on a pirate ship that travels between universes — but there’s something else on board that’s far more dangerous.

The Scrape of Tooth on Bone, by Ada Hoffmann (fiction)
A timid lesbian robot mechanic who can channel the spirits of the dead gets caught up in the deadly intrigues of rival paleontologists.

Waiting for the Zeppelins, by Nick Walker (fiction)
Agent Smiley of the Reality Patrol finds himself in dire peril when his plan to stop Sigmund Freud from destroying London goes awry.

You can order Spoon Knife 3 direct from Autonomous Press, or from Amazon, or through your local bookstore.

 

Two Essentials for Beating Writer’s Block This Year

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So you want to craft some fiction or poetry and you’ve got ideas brewing, but you’re struggling with how to get them out of the concept stage and onto the page. Maybe you blew through 50,000 words (or more) this past NaNoWriMo and you’re feeling some serious brain drain. Thankfully, we’ve got some tips to help you jump-start your creativity. If you’re contending with a wicked case of writer’s block or just need a little extra nudge, try our advice to help the ideas pour out of your head.

1. Tell Your Inner Critic to F*ck Off

There are times where you need an honest eye to review the fiction, poems or other work you’ve already generated. Married with a willingness to “kill your darlings” (yes, we know you’ve seen that phrase A LOT, but stay with us), the two can serve as a powerful combo to help you revise and refine down to your best work.

However, those aren’t the tools you need while you’re furiously trying to channel your ideas from the amphitheater of your mind to a blank screen.

Many writers strive to impeccably capture everything in that first go. In these cases, the inner critic can
“red-flag” every word choice, image or piece of dialogue in your fiction, or every line break, metaphor, simile or rhyme in your poems. The first draft ISN’T the time for perfect; it’s the time to bring your ideas into reality. You can do the other hard work of revising and rewriting later. Seriously.

2. Your First Drafts Are NOT Crap

The famous axiom that one’s first draft is always “crap” is usually attributed to Hemingway. Whoever said it probably wanted to either 1) emphasize the importance of revision or 2) drive home the point that whatever you put down first doesn’t have to be perfect.

Well, guess what? Whether it’s novel-length fiction, poetry, short stories or anything else, the very first things you write will be imperfect. But that doesn’t mean they’re crap.

Maybe you’ve had a well-meaning fellow writer parroting the idea, or a writing instructor insisting it was gospel truth. (We’d like to give that instructor a piece of our minds, but we digress.) Right now, it’s time to forget that “helpful advice.” Let your fingers fly over the keys or the page. Think of that output as simply the rough and unpolished beginnings of something beautiful, with raw potential living inside the text.

We offer this advice to help your first drafts take form in the here and now. Stay tuned for more writing tips, and don’t forget to check out the AutPress store’s latest releases like Verity Reynolds’ Nantais and Ada Hoffman’s Monsters in My Mind.

Author Interview: Ada Hoffmann Discusses Monsters in My Mind and Other Projects

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We sat down with Ada Hoffmann, author of Monsters in My Mind, to talk about speculative fiction, the state of the writing world, and what’s next.

AutPress: Why MONSTERS IN MY MIND? Why speculative fiction generally, and why this collection?

Ada: I grew up around speculative fiction. It’s a childhood love, and one of those things that was always there. Literary realism never felt grounded to me – it felt small, stifled. Consciously cut off from all the realms of imagination that could have been.

I’ve been publishing short speculative fiction and poetry since 2010. Short fiction is a delight to me – I probably read more of it than novels. I’ve also written a lot, and I wanted to make that writing tangible. A physical object that I could hold in my hands and give to people.

I organized MONSTERS IN MY MIND around a loose theme appropriate to NeuroQueer Books – the theme of being different, monstrous, or out of place, and hoping to somehow be accepted that way. I grouped stories and poems so that they moved through different ways of engaging with that theme in a way that felt, in a very abstract sense, like its own story. A few short works I loved didn’t make the cut, not because there was anything wrong with them, but because they didn’t fit into that “story”. Maybe they’ll go into a future book!

As for the title, I don’t remember where I got it, but it happened fairly late in production. I’m not the first person to have used the phrase. If you want to assume cryptamnesia, then it probably comes from the song “Happy Hurts,” by Icon For Hire.

AutPress: What are some of your favorite sources of inspiration? What/Who else do you read or recommend?

Ada: Sometimes ideas just happen. It isn’t glamorous. “You Have to Follow the Rules” was based on a dream that my friend A. Merc Rustad had. “The Chartreuse Monster” came partly from a random number generator. “Centipede Girl” was inspired by an actual centipede that crawled on my keyboard, and “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library” was based on a list of tropes that another friend of mine liked. One of my best ways to generate ideas is by going to a classical music concert, where I’m forced to sit in a chair for two hours, listen to pleasant noises, and let my mind wander. And my go-to method for coming up with more poetry is just to binge-read any poetry at hand until my mind starts automatically arranging its thoughts into verse.

In terms of other authors who inspire me, Catherynne M. Valente’s collection “A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects” was the reason I got serious about poetry. Meda Kahn’s short story “Difference of Opinion” pushed me to be better and braver about autism representation. I would love one day to build worlds like China Miéville, develop characters like Lois McMaster Bujold, dispense careful wisdom like Rose Lemberg, build up a sense of scale like Robert Charles Wilson, quip and twist the plot like Joss Whedon on a good day, and tap into the depths of my id like Tanith Lee. Anybody wanting more of the queer and neurodivergent themes from MONSTERS IN MY MIND should check out A. Merc Rustad and Bogi Takács, among many others.

AutPress: What’s the most unexpected thing that happened while you were working on this collection (or any particular part of it)?

Ada: Once I had all the stories, putting the collection together was pretty straightforward. Though – one unexpected thing that happened while the collection came together was that I landed an agent for a novel I’d written. That was very distracting, in a good way.

[Full Disclosure: The interviewer was a beta reader for this novel, which fully deserves all the love an agent can give it.]

AutPress: Where is spec fic/dark fic/weird fiction headed? What does it need more of?

Ada: I don’t think spec fic will ever go in just one direction. It’s a big tent with a huge number of things going on.

It’s clear, though, that at least some parts of spec fic are moving towards more diversity and better representation. There’s an increased interest in diverse characters, in diverse authors, in concepts like #ownvoices – and also in the range of new ideas, not just writing about themselves, that marginalized authors bring to the table. I’m really enjoying all the recent counter-Lovecraftian fiction, for instance. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Innsmouth Free Press was doing this for years, but now it’s been joined by some higher-profile friends: Ruthanna Emrys’s “Innsmouth Legacy” series and Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom”, to name two.

Of course, this trend comes with pushback; you don’t need me to tell you the story of the Sad Puppies. It would be naive, especially in 2017, to say that things will clearly keep changing for the better. But we’ll see what happens.

AutPress: What are you currently working on, and what’s next?

Ada: Well, my agent is shopping my novel around, and I’m replenishing my store of short fiction and poetry. I’ve written some really daring short pieces that I’m very excited to share when they find a home. Two collaborations that I love are coming out in the next year or so – one with Jacqueline Flay in Persistent Visions, the other with A. Merc Rustad in Lightspeed. I’m also working on a collection of dinosaur poetry called “Million-Year Elegies”. That’s about 75% done, and a few early pieces from that series are already published online, if you want a teaser. Of course, I’m also still working on my PhD research, in which I teach computers to write their own poetry. My biggest challenge is finding time for all these projects and book promo, too!

Visit Ada Hoffmann online at http://www.ada-hoffmann.com. Pick up a copy of Monsters in My Mind on Amazon or via the AutPress store.

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Author Marketing 101, Part 1: Why Every Author Needs to Do Their Own Marketing

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Very few writers daydream about becoming their own marketing point person. On the list of exciting things that might happen after you complete your manuscript, “author marketing” might rank near the bottom.

In order to succeed, though, you need to do what every successful author does: take the lead on your own marketing.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to show you how to do just that. First, though, we’re going to answer a burning question: Why do you need to promote your own book?

1. No one knows your book like you do.

You’ve lived with the world of your book for months or even years. You understand what’s going on, why it exists, and how it operates. While a professional promoter or your publisher can help you place promotional materials in front of the right audiences, the most compelling promotions are going to come from you.

2. People like to put their money where their friendships are.

“Author marketing” isn’t just about an author promoting their own book (although that’s a lot of it). It’s also about promoting yourself: as an author, as a source of fun and creative ideas, and as a person.

About 350,000 books get published each year in the U.S. alone. Most of us only hear about a fraction of them, but we definitely hear about the ones our friends and acquaintances write. By building a strong following, you expand your “friends and acquaintances” circle – thus expanding the circle of people who will line up to buy your book.

3. Promoting your book will make you a better writer.

Try this writing exercise: Imagine someone else wrote your book. Generate 3-5 one-sentence descriptions of it that would make you pick it up and read it.

Not easy, right? But a lot of fun. Marketing your book gives you a different perspective on the work. It demands that you write in different ways. And in doing so, it sharpens your own writing skills.

If author marketing feels like a total mystery, don’t fret. As a publisher who markets our writers and teaches them to market themselves, we’re going to break down the details for you over the next several weeks. Stay tuned!

Great Gift Ideas for Writers

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They say that if you want to succeed as a professional writer, you need to read. It sounds like simple advice, but it’s true. Specifically, you need to read what is fresh and new, as well as what will give you an idea about the history of the style you are developing and working in. For writers who don’t always embody the traditionally cultivated image of a writer in American publishing, it can be hard to find role model writers.

Historically, disabled writers, mentally ill writers, and even writers of color have found themselves erased from mainstream publishing. Luckily, there are a number of independent venues that have always served to help elevate diverse books. Traditionally, these include important presses like Grove, as well as daring university presses like the one out of Duke.

In today’s electronic landscape, both writers and readers are clamoring for diverse books, and a new generation of writers is growing up demanding stories about people like them, by people like them. That’s why Autonomous Press and Neuroqueer Books have expanded our search for diverse writers. If you’re looking for a gift for a reader who wants to see both diversity and depth of storytelling, you need to check out the package discount on our Spoon Knife series. Between the two volumes, over 60 writers with a diverse range of backgrounds tell stories of neurological divergence and queerness.

There are also deep discounts on The Puzzlebox Collective’s Shaping Clay series, following the exploits of an autistic transgender girl as she comes to terms with the need to keep her identity hidden from everyone around her.

Lovers of poetry will find Barking Sycamores a treat, and you can easily tip them off to the free reading on the blog before surprising readers with the collections, available now on the Autonomous Press site. Of course, Christmas isn’t the only time readers need new books, so it might be worthwhile to add yourself to our mailing list today. Mailing list subscribers get access to great discounts not available elsewhere, including 20 percent off new release coupons, bundle clearance deals, and more.

Order soon! You’ll want to get your order to our store by 12/14 to make sure we can get you books by the holidays.

AutPress: Where Writers Get Paid for Their Work

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If you’ve ever searched for mainstream or indie publishers that are also paying outlets for writers, you already know how difficult it can be to receive fair compensation for the labor and creative efforts you’ve put into crafting your fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, or nonfiction pieces. At Autonomous Press, we’re not only changing the game by the books that we offer to our readership, but also by what we offer to our authors. With a business model that’s drastically different than other publishing houses, we set ourselves apart from the rest of the industry.

How Is AutPress Different From the Rest?

 There’s one major difference between AutPress and other indie publishers that we’d like to call attention to straightaway: One of our central focuses is on compensating writers. It’s part of our total plan to revolutionize publishing, which also includes uplifting marginalized voices that are underrepresented in mainstream media. We want work that pushes boundaries and ventures outside conventional genre norms. In short, we’re looking for unique, untold stories that demand an audience, along with storytellers willing to craft them into self-contained universes and receive royalties for doing so.

How’s that for a fancy way to say, “Get paid for writing fiction”?

Speaking of Writing Fiction….

 Fiction’s not the only type of work we want from aspiring writers seeking indie publishers, but you’re going to see a lot of it released by AutPress in the coming months. On deck for our extravaganza of deliciously weird fiction this autumn we’ve got Verity Reynolds’ sci-fi novel Nantais that’s packed with a rogue computer virus, a search for a missing child and an interstellar plaque that could wipe out an entire alien species. Coming up we’ve also got Hoshi and the Red City Circuit, a science fiction novel by Dora Raymaker, and Monsters in My Mind, a mind-bending collection of fiction and poetry by Ada Hoffman. Keep an eye out for these titles in the AutPress store.

Come Join Our Revolution, Comrades

You’ve now seen three reasons why we’re unlike any other indie publishers in existence. We not only center the voices or marginalized people but we also pay them for their work. Moreover, we love material that’s engaging, innovative, weird and just plain fun to read. That’s a major departure from many media and publishing companies, and we’re glad to be a standout from the pack.

5 Books to Read If You’re Already Writing a Novel

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Type “books to read if you want to write a novel” into any search engine, and you’ll get thousands of recommendations for first time writers. But what should you read if you’re already working on your first novel?

Here are five of our favorites:

  1. Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Poet Natalie Goldberg’s first book on writing was published in 1986, and like good Scotch, it’s improved with time. Goldberg’s method of combining Zen reflection with practical writing advice can help you get “unstuck” at exactly the right moment by seeing writing as a process and a joy—not a slog.

  1. Michael S. Monje Jr., The US Book

You already know what writing every day does for you, even as a first time writer. But what do you want those words to do for your reader? The US Book is a profound object lesson in words as music, as architecture, and as tools that change the world.

  1. Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need

Don’t intend to write for the screen? Blake Snyder has your back anyway. His 15-count “beat” structure, outlined in Save the Cat!, forms the backbone of any strong feature-length plot—like, say, that of a novel. If you know where you’re going but you’re not sure how to get there, this book can help you locate the signposts.

  1. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

If you want something to read that won’t mess up your flow or bleed over into your plot (probably), Pirsig’s classic meditation on the meaning and purpose of Quality can help you appreciate the process of writing—and your product—in an entirely new way.

  1. The Spoon Knife Anthology Series

Released yearly, the Spoon Knife Anthology series features some of the best writing from established and first time writers in the science fiction, spec fic, and weird fiction fields. Choose the Spoon Knife whose theme is closest to your own work, or browse them all to find inspiration and see the craft in action.

 

And Flash Gordon Was There… Putting the “Flash” In Sci-Fi Flash Fiction

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Do you love science fiction? Do you love writing and/or reading weird things? Does your attention move at warp speed?

If you answered, “yes, yes, and yes!”, flash fiction might be the niche for you.

A typical flash fiction story clocks in around 1000 words (for comparison, this post is about 400 words). With such a short space to work, plot becomes compressed and detail becomes more focused. Reading and writing flash fiction is a great way to learn how to pack more impact into writing, producing more vivid results.

Here’s what to keep in mind when exploring sci-fi flash fiction:

Keep It Focused

Traditional science fiction relies heavily on worldbuilding. The chance to explore invented worlds is one of the primary reasons fans of the genre love reading it and its authors love writing it.

A thousand words or fewer, however, doesn’t give you much time to produce the kind of texture and detail of epic worldbuilding. Instead, you’ll need to focus on a few key details, and allow readers to fill in the rest with their imaginations.

Keep It Close to the Flash Point

All good stories start close enough to the crisis point to allow the reader (or viewer) to understand very quickly what’s at stake and how the crisis point resulted from those stakes. In flash fiction, however, the distance between the start and the crisis, or “flash point,” is even shorter.

The best ultra-short science fiction stories tend to be subtle. Epic space battles are impossible to do in a thousand words—but a child’s singed boot lying in a middle of a corridor is an entire story in itself.

Keep It Real

Starting a piece of flash fiction with a self-imposed word limit is often a recipe for failure. Instead, simply write. You can trim later, and if the story ends up being longer than you anticipated, it might make an excellent piece of longer fiction—or even a novella.

As in any genre, reading flash fiction can help you learn to write it—or simply give you the chance to explore weird new worlds in a short time frame. Anthologies featuring traditional short fiction, flash fiction, and poetry on your chosen themes can help you see the craft of “out there” writing in action.