 To trace the trajectory of the various mutations of what ended up being “Barter for the Stars” would be long and convoluted. The element that remained the same was that there was a speakeasy-esque-slash-nightclub-esque singer in the future who wanted to get off her planet. Usually that planet wasn’t earth. In one version she wanted to get to earth. In the final version, she wanted to leave earth. The destination didn’t matter really, but the yearning.
Even more so, my singer morphed over time. In a variation of this story that was more a mystery, she was a femme fatale being, playing leading lady in a film noir-inspired story. (If that sounds cool, please understand that didn’t get very far because I didn’t know how to write film noir style mystery.) In a more recent attempt she was a deconstruction of this type. Still, that version of the story didn’t quite work. Thus the story idea got put on the back burner again and again. # “Barter for the Stars” is part of an interesting project -- a shared universe anthology: Five Minutes at Stormcove Hotel. The editor had an extensive history for the fictional Stormcove Hotel provided and requested pieces of short fiction that happen sometime during this history -- stretching from prehistoric to the future -- somewhere on the hotel grounds, and that takes place within five minutes. Wooh, that’s a mouthful. Reading these parameters, it clicked almost immediately that my singer might’ve finally found her home. All of the grand ideas and yearnings and deconstruction of archetypes pared down into six hundred words… And it was successful. # No idea is lost just because it doesn’t fit into the shape you first think it should. Ideas can fester, grow, shrink, mutatate, evolve, change, and be reshaped over time, just sitting in the back of your head. I’m glad this idea, after all this time, found its place. I’m glad that it taught me that all those unused or unsuccessful ideas of the past are not lost. They just might just need a little more time to firment # The Five Minutes at Stormcove Hotel Anthology where “Barter for the Stars” is featured can be purchased HERE.
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“The Witch and the Runaway” was a unique submission experience for me in that I was accepted in the first and only publication I submitted to. That is that power of a perfect match. Briar’s Lit -- the online literary magazine which accepted and published my work -- is a publication for queer-themed fairy tales. And that is what I had written.
While I had only written this fairy tale back in October 2018 (this is quickest turn around from written to publication too), the inspiration is already a little fuzzy for me. I’m not sure if I ran across Briar’s Lit and its mission during my regular perusal of literary magazines and submission calls, and then this story sprung to me, or this story sprung to me and I fortuitously found Briar’s Lit. In truth, I think the two of them were more messily mingled together. I think the inspiration and how it repurposes fairy tale (and Disney movie tropes) is evident. Take the princess who doesn’t want to be in an arranged marriage because she wants to marry for love, and chop off that ending and make it that she doesn’t want to get married at all. Add a crotchety but fundamentally good witch and some found family themes, and there you go. To be honest, this story probably reveals a lot of myself and my worldview in an explicit way more than my other stories. If you missed it or haven’t had a change to read it yet, check it out Here.  Intro
With great aplum I would like to announce that my story “Another Life” has found a home in Vol 3 of the sci fi anthology series Future Visions. Buy it here. “Nothing’s been right since Dana awoke from 23-year long coma: she hasn’t aged a day, her memories don’t feel like her own, and her husband Ben is having locked door meetings with her doctor. Secrets are being kept from her, and she’s going to figure out what they are.” I don’t want to spoil this story, a la the secrets Dana is seeking out, so below in “Behind the Story” I will only talk in broad strokes about “Another Life” Themes What makes us human? This is a question proposed in a lot of science fiction as technology encroaches on our lives, for good and ill, and as technology advances in intelligence and human capability. Is our memories downloaded into a computer our continued existence or just a computer with memories? Can artificial intelligence reach the point of humanity? What standard even is that? What about androids? What about clones -- separate individuals or the same? How much of us can become technology and still be us? Are we bodies or brain or souls? I took that classic quandary of what makes us human and what defines are personhood, and grafted that together questions of womanhood. At the time of writing, I was having a lot of personal anxiety about my personal identity and role in the world as a woman in terms of the set roles that are often expected of us. Motherhood, marriage, taking your husband’s last name, etcetera and so on. This definitely comes across in this and some other short stories I wrote about the same period. I think those themes of sci fi personhood and female identity converge as natural metaphorical partners. It sounds so deliberate and grand when I explain it like that, but it was a lot more intuitive in the actual writing. I’ve realized certain anxieties and opinions that have influenced by writing after the fact. Writing Process I recall having a very specific vision for “Another Life” with the ending known and very specific beats imagined along the way. So I wrote it, beginning to end, hitting those beats and coming to the end in a pretty painless experience. Reviewing it, however, I quickly saw that all that emotional beats I had imagined weren’t enough to support the entire story. The ‘twist’ reveal of the end came out of nowhere and needed better set up. My rewrites of “Another Life” were, in this case, mostly additive. This experience speaks a lot to my process of writing. What draws me to the story is the characters, the themes, or the emotional beats. Plot is of secondary interest. Plot is something I have to work on and build more deliberately. Favorite Line “It was just there. Like paint on the wall.” Sorry, this post is long enough, but I can’t help to stop and highlight one of my favorite, perhaps innocuous lines. I remember writing this line. I remember where I was when I wrote it. That’s how much I like it. If you haven’t read “Another Life” yet this line drops when the main character Dana comes to a certain realization. She is lying awake in bed, on her side, back to her husband. I like this line because it implies a lot, it is a metaphor so integrated in the scene it is barely a metaphor. Like the wall she is staring at and finally noticing the paint color that has been there surrounding her the entire time, so to does she this revelation come to her. Just there. Like paint on the wall. Conclusion This and “The Pawnshop of Intangible Things” are two of my favorite short stories I’ve written. I have been shopping around “Another Life” for a while and have never wanted to give it up to a throwaway magazine. I’m excited that it found its place in this rather cool indie published venture of Future Visions and editor Brian J. Walton. I’ll probably write a blog on that experience when I’m a little farther down the road with it than now. There is limited time discounted pricing on the ebook for launch week only, so check it out now. |
Margery BayneInsights from the life of an aspiring, struggling writer; a passionate reader, and a working librarian. Archives
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