If you missed it, I like to think I'm a writer. As of this writing, I have sold two short stories to professional markets, and have several others complete or nearly complete, with 3 novels in various stages of research/completion.
On April 1st, 2008, the second anthology which contains one of my stories released. The April 1st release date was no coincidence.
Misspelled is a collection of 14 short stories about "spelling errors". Specifically, magic going wrong, or in an unexpected way do to a mistake on the caster's part. My contribution was
A Perfect Circle, a story of assumptions, philosophy, and magical failure because of a spelling error in the original.
That night, I did a launch reading in the restaurant of McNally Robinson Booksellers, the store where I have my real job. It was well attended (About 40-50 people showed up specifically for the event, and there were another 20-30 in the restaurant I can't be sure of since I didn't recognize them.), and the reading was well received. I'm going to reproduce below most of what I said that night.
Penguin Canada, who distribute for DAW, had provided money for ads in the local paper and some for handing out cookies (Perfect Circles) and coffee and punch. I spoke/read for about 25 minutes, then chatted and signed for another hour. We sold 34 copies of "Misspelled" during the event.
Below is the prepared content for my speaking, including about 700 words from an abandoned (for now) novel. What is below was followed by 2100 words from
A Perfect Circle I won't quote that, since it's a bit big for publishing in a public forum. If anyone is not able to get the anthology and would like to see it, I can email you the chunk privately, just let me know.
It should be noted that in the parts where I talk about things, rather than reading the story material, I actually diverged quite significantly from what is written here:
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Good evening. I want to thank everybody for taking the time to come and listen. It's not often people voluntarily come to listen to me talk. At least, not those who know me. Usually I have to trap them in a corner.
If you need to look at your watch, I forgive you in advance. Every time I tried to make this shorter, it got a bit longer and now it is probably a bit over 25 minutes.
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I'm here to introduce to you all my short story
A Perfect Circle from the
Misspelled anthology. Before I get to that, since I can't read you the entire story and still sell books, I want to set the mood a bit by reading something else. But, before I do that, I want thank a couple of people and I'll start that by explaining part of why I'm thanking here.
While it might not be intuitive, short fiction represents an entirely different kind of world from novels. In a lot of ways, it is easier. Because we are working in a restricted space, we are allowed to cut a few corners, leave a few things unexplained or less than perfectly defined. The plot has to be fairly straight forward and the cast, limited, so there is less for the us to track and sub plots are essentially non-existent. When the story is part of an anthology with a number of other authors, we are allowed to rely on the fact that the reader is expecting something in particular. In this case, the reader is expecting a story that involves magic that has gone awry. I can count on the reader knowing that this is a fantasy setting, that my world will violate some of the laws of the universe we live in, and that they need to watch for a mistake.
Despite those advantages, short fiction imposes a lot of restrictions that cause many authors to avoid them like the plague. We have fewer words to develop a sense of place for the characters and to develop the characters themselves. Each chosen word becomes more important for its economy of ideas. We are permitted no preface, to discuss and set up the concept and its origins. And, to get to the point, from a social point of view we aren't granted the same freedom to acknowledge those who have contributed to the final result. No acknowledgement, to bring in all the people who help make our writing what it is.
Reading in public is one of the few opportunities we are given to correct that deficiency in a public fashion, so that's what I'm about to do. When I launched my previous story, "Uncle Ernie was a Goat" I was able to acknowledge some of the people who have contributed to making me the person I am, to shaping me into the writer I am today. I think that bears repeating, since it is a core part of who I am. My wife, Victoria, who inspires me every day with smiles in the face of adversity and Pat Derbowka and Rene Baxter the two teachers who I feel exerted the greatest positive influence on my youth. In the case of "Uncle Ernie...", there was less specific input. Because I wrote it quickly and didn't really show it to anyone before submitting it, I had no specific people to thank for its creation. In the case of "A Perfect Circle,"however, I asked a number of people to look at the story before it went out. So, besides the general people who make every day a little bit easier, I'd like to thank a few people who specifically contributed to helping me make the story what it is. My co-workers Kim and Jon, who read the story before anyone but Victoria had seen it, (and who both asked a few questions that needed to be asked) and the members of my regular Saturday night gaming crew, Al, Sue, Doug, Lorne, and in particular, Gary Gregor who suggested a change that became instrumental, not only in the final layout of the story, but in its very title. So tonight I'm giving him a special thanks for his input.
To set the mood for
A Perfect Circle" I'm going to read a piece of trash:
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From the incomplete novel
Blood Wall(As a bit of background to what I'm reading here, if we had approached this from another angle, we would already know that we are looking at Ash, a slender, pale not-quite-human male who has been alive for at least 1500 years in a world completely unlike ours. Our last site of Ash was as an eager, thoughtful young man, serving as apprentice to Saermund, a highly principled wizard who sacrificed much of his adult life to a potent spell in the distant past, in order that he would be able to help when a great evil returned in what was his future. Now, hundreds of years later, we see Ash standing on a platform at the top of a hill, behind another man, his left hand gripping the other tightly by the hair, his right holding a long dagger that is covered with fresh blood. The man he holds is heavily sedated and offers no resistance.)
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Bone weary. There was no other way to adequately describe what Ash was feeling. For nearly ten years he had laboured at this spell every full moon. There was nowhere left in his compound that he could go to escape the stench of death. Thousands of sacrifices spread over interminable years had left him numb. He glanced at the red dagger in his hand and wondered, again, for just a moment, about simply stopping.
As he paused, he noticed his assistant was looking at him with confusion. Ash shook his head wearily and continued. Fifteen centuries of fighting had built an inertia of purpose he couldn't overcome—not even to save his sanity.
He knew he was becoming emotional of late. He'd long since lost the detached sense of purpose he’d begun with. Every new death cut into him like the knife that caused it. He’d once expected it to be the other way and, to a degree, it had—in the beginning. The second hundred deaths had been far easier than the first hundred, or even the first one, and the second thousand easier yet. Now though—the ghosts he’d made crowded his every thought, their cries gnawing at his sleep, the stench of their cast off bodies filling his mind at every waking moment. A numbness filled his body with lead as he struggled to raise his dripping knife. As he braced to pull the razor knife through the next throat in line, moisture welled in his eyes.
He steeled himself and suppressed the forming tears. With a precision born of years of practical experience, the knife sliced cleanly. The sacrifice, fastidiously positioned in life, in death obligingly fell forward to join the other corpses as part the loathsome pile on the ground below. Ash was proud that not a drop of its blood touched him as it died or fell. If he'd learned little else in ten years, he'd become very good at avoiding the blood. The words of the spell followed without conscious thought. He didn’t think it would be possible to kill without the words anymore. Nearly ten thousand times he’d repeated the ritual and he could hardly stop now.
The next sacrifice was placed in front of him and up came the knife again. Slice--Drop--Speak. A drop of blood on his sleeve caught his attention and irritation spiked at his carelessness but was quickly suppressed. Slice-- Drop--Speak. Slice--Drop--Speak. He was an automaton of death carrying out its program.
Moments later, when no new sacrifice appeared he stared stupidly at his assistant Gaernon.
“That’s all m’lord. You are done until next moon.” The man took him gently by the shoulder and steered him into the hall. “Time for a rest before supper”
Relief was the one pleasant emotion left to him. It washed over him like an orgasm, leaving him tingling and drained. It took a conscious effort to release the dagger from his tense grip. It slipped from his long pale fingers and clattered to the platform as he reached up to rub the death smell from his nose. It was a compulsion now, every moon he rubbed, every day he failed to remove the smell.
As he followed Gaernon back into the hall, the perfume of hundreds of cut flowers assaulted them, but could not drive the corruption out. Completely docile, he was lead to his sleeping chamber and put onto his bed. Four women came forward and began to rub his body with scented oils, straining themselves to relax his taught muscles and distract him from his pain. Though he wanted to be interested in them it was beyond him. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt, after all these years, Gaernon still put so much work into finding and training them. The feeling passed quickly. As fair and pleasing as they were, he just couldn’t be interested any more. And if he had any guilt left to feel, it had a more painful target
As his consciousness slipped downward to the cruelty of nightmare laced sleep, his angry thoughts drifted outward “Where are you Saermund? I know you are out there, watching. Where are you hiding? When will you finally make your move?” As he felt the beginning of the blackness, his thoughts focused for a whisper. “At least the stench hasn’t reached my dreams.”
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It doesn't, I hope, seem like garbage, yet it is. I wrote nearly 15,000 words on the book it comes from, before deciding it was unpublishable, worse, not worth having published. It reflected a number of essential errors that new writers make, and simply didn't have a good reason for existing. It proved valuable, though, by teaching me some things about myself and my skills. Aside from valuing it for that, I think it provides a good backdrop for talking about today's launch.
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So, underneath my story, lies two ideas. Perfection and Evil.
Of Perfection, one of my favourite descriptions was delivered by Antoine de St-Exupery when he wrote
“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away.”
Regarding Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote:
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
Perfect. It doesn't seem like a tricky word. Something much desired yet rarely found. Wouldn't it be nice....to live in a perfect world?
In a perfect world, I would have a perfect life, the perfect job or hobby or whatever other entirely unnecessary way I choose to occupy my perfect time. It wouldn't be writing. Writing is about a few things, none of which are necessary in a perfect world. No need to record facts, everyone is perfect and comes into the world knowing everything they need or want to know, and they never forget it. No need to spread new information for the same reason. No need for fiction, what point fiction in a world where everyone is already right, and understands the far reaching consequences of their every action without prior thought? Everyone already knows why they do things, why things are the way they are. Perfection precludes disharmony, pain, fear, anxiety, errors. In a perfect world everyone is, well, perfect.
But can we, or more importantly, should we, achieve perfection? If Mozart creates the perfect composition, then what need have we for Mendelssohn or Madonna. If the Sistine chapel is perfect, is there any need for Monet to pick up a brush?
The struggle to get closer to heaven is one of the key characteristics that separate us from the rest of life on earth. It is humanity's nature to prove that we are worthy of perfection. It isn't so clear whether we know when we have come as close as we ought in a particular endeavour.
We have reached a point where we create entire universes for our own education and entertainment. In our efforts to make those universes mimic reality as close as we may, we strive for perfection in those creations. A perfect simulation of defeating evil (which certainly seems a noble cause) requires the perfect simulation of evil.
If, as an Egyptian proverb holds, “a beautiful thing is never perfect,” then what IS perfection? And can we create the exemplification of evil, in order to defeat it, without doing evil at the same time?
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I'm going to read now from the beginning of "A Perfect Circle. I'll trim a few paragraphs, to keep as close as I can to the twenty-five minutes I promised, so there might be some gaps in what I read here. And I definitely won't be reading the whole story, so you'll still have to read it to find out how it ends.
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[2100 word excerpt from "A Perfect Circle"]
