I neglected to mention, but early this month I updated the Clarion blogs, journals and other linkey things collection.
My November update links to words by Val Nolan, Michael Underwood and the Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship.
Please post in the comments or e-mail me if there are other posts to add to the collection. It’s now at a point where it’s hard to find journals through normal searches.
Music, Things and poetry news.
Musical challenge complete!
I have written a love song to a baked good, or more precisely a Lament for Pie. The lament ended up getting a lengthy introduction as I decided to write the synopsis for an over the top musical about food. And wow! That sparked imaginations.
Jeffrey has been inspired to write the opening number of the musical and EJ read the lyrics and got the song stuck in her head. She was earwormed by a song she had never heard! She read the lyrics and spontaneously made up her own addictive tune.
As you can imagine I thought this was all sorts of wonderful and asked EJ if she could record her version of the song and send it to me. You can now listen to both versions on the Lament for Pie page, although you’re welcome to not listen and send me your recording of what you think it should sound like.
I exploded with a bunch of Things comics last week. 42 of 130 comics complete, only 88 to go. I haven’t drawn as much this week, I’ve been making good progress on a new novel and submitting short stories to publishers. What’s with that? I have some drawings that need to be turned into animated giffs, but technology and I continue to argue. One of the reasons I am drawing on the iPad is because I don’t have access to a scanner or a computer set up to manipulate graphics. Hopefully I will overcome these technological hurdles soon. I also need to update the archives page. Does the archives page work for you in its current format? Let me know if it doesn’t.
My poem will be appearing in Apex Magazine on Tuesday, not late 2013! I am excited. They’ve also changed the layout of their website and I keep clicking the rotatey image bit at the top of the page. I get to see pretty art and the names of authors I like go round and round.
As some of you may recall I have a short story that will be coming out in the anthology formerly known as Machine of Death: Volume 2. “Blunt Force Delivered by Spouse” is about love and land and violence and hardship and strength and love and loss and sisters, but most of all it is a story I am very proud of.
This is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death will be launched at San Diego Comicon in July 2013 and is being published by Grand Central Publishing (part of the Hachette book group).
As part of the build up for This is How You Die they’re selling hard copies of Volume 1 for insanely cheap prices (and of course you can still read the electronic version for free), they’re producing new MOD machine cards, special releases and all sorts of good things. You can read a full write up on the Machine of Death website, discover more artists who will be part of the project, and see a much larger version of the cover art.
During Leonard’s memorial I mentioned the Clarion wall. During Clarion we stuck a bunch of crazy quotes on the wall of our common room. Words from critiques and sometimes just from random conversations. In the center was “Screw being a time traveling researcher, I want to be a writer.”
I’m staying with the marvelous Ed and Nicole and Nicole has saved many of the quotes. Some people took quotes of personal significance away with them at the end of Clarion, but all the others Nicole preserved and put in a gorgeous scrap book. Looking at them makes me laugh out loud, remember, or think what on earth?
In no particular order, here’s the contents of Nicole’s scrapbook, you can imagine or guess who said what.
Leonard Pung died on Monday 3 September 2012 from complications caused by leukemia. My condolences to his friends, colleagues and family. Seeing people from other aspects of Leonard’s life is heartwarming, full of remarkable kith and kin. Clarion has founded a scholarship in his honor.
I met Leonard when we went to Clarion together. Clarion Class of ’09, I love us. We had such a great balance of people, community builders in so many different, complementary ways. Leonard was an important part of our social glue and it’s hard to imagine what Clarion would have been like without him. We have such a great balance of creative voices too, from high fantasy to complex literary to hard SF. Leonard’s work was physical and philosophical, full of memories and the now.
There are stories I wanted him to write that will never happen. I wanted him to write wilderness survival fiction so much, but there was other work his muse needed him to do first. Wilderness fiction helped me feel strong and resilient when I was growing up and I knew he would write it well. He would have given stories of endurance and nature to a new generation. I hope some day I can write fiction of wilderness survival, but it won’t be the same.
In June, seeing communities grieve for people I did not know I wrote “There’s no such thing as no impact.” I’m glad I did, sometimes it takes distance to be able to put together words. And now, when there is less distance, I can look at them.
The day before Leonard died I sent a short story to one of my critique groups. “Shadow Play” starts like this:
Every time the shadow puppets play someone is saying goodbye. Someone is saying please don’t go. Someone is saying, if only, please. Someone is saying I remember when, and laughing.
Every shadow play is a memory.
The day he died I wrote this on facebook:
Pung, I’ll never forget walking in the sun in San Diego and talking. Walking slow as if that would draw Clarion out just a little bit longer, hold that moment, no need to rush. You introduced me to the Sierras. You gave us The Picard. You were kind and funny and thoughtful and worked so damn hard. And you had so many more words in you. And I am lucky that I can say you were, and you are, my friend.
Since then people have written about him
Photos and many posts to and about Leonard can be found on his facebook wall https://www.facebook.com/leonard.pung
Leonard reading from his short story “Crossroads” in March 2012 at the Los Angeles County Mueseum of Art.
If you have written about Leonard and would like me to add it here for easy reference please let me know. If you would prefer I didn’t link to you please let me know and I’ll remove it.
There is comfort in words, and sometimes pain. Trying to find my own and reading others can be like the monsoon. Words like shadow puppets.
Every time the shadow puppets play someone is saying goodbye. Someone is saying please don’t go. Someone is saying, if only, please. Someone is saying I remember when, and laughing.
Great news! Apex will be publishing my poem Casanova Clay, probably in late 2013. Casanova Clay started as a piece of twitter fiction (lovingly rejected because the story needed to be bigger) and then slowly grew over the years. He got me back into writing poetry. I love Casanova and its nice to know others like him too.
Clarion Write-a-Thon wrap up! Yes it has been some time. Through the power of giving $6.50 (on top of what I donated to other writers) I just managed to meet my target of $400. I don’t know if that’s cheating or not, but I’m so happy to hit that $400 target. That target seemed crazy ambitious, but together we did it. I really appreciate everyone’s support, financial, emotional, by double dog daring me or being amazing and inspiring me to increase my efforts.
A big shoutout of love to my sponsors
For you I wrote words, made comics, finished a love song and worked on the compost that tasty creative vegetables come from.
There is work still to be done. I challenged folks and accepted mad challenges at the last minute. By the next write a thon I must write a love song to a baked good aaaaand….
In the last few days of the write-a-thon I said that for every new dollar I raised I would draw a Things Without Arms and Without Legs comic. And that’s why I need to draw 111 Things Without Arms and Without Legs comics. I created 19 Things comics during the write-a-thon, so there will be at least 130 Things Without Arms and Without Legs comics in the world.
$111 dollars? $1 a comic? Was I mad? Quite probably, yes. Thank you for keeping the pressure on, it’s a good kind of squeezing.
We are now up to Things comic number 34, hooray! Comic 34 feels more reassuring than 15 of 111!