Rejected!

The Mayor's Skin came back on Friday, with an unsigned, half-sheet rejection letter.

This was what I call an "expected rejection" — I submitted it where I did not because I thought it would suit them particularly, but because they pay well and respond quickly, and my first choice is currently closed to submissions. Even so, it stung, in part because the editor said the story "couldn't hold [his] interest." It's a form letter, one that's been sent to thousands of writers this year alone, and it intends nothing personal; but that phrase clutches at the roots of a writer's self-worth. If I can't hold your interest, I have no back-up strategy. I'm a crank, a poser, a dabbler, a machine for killing time.

To defuse this line of thought, I list off the writers who inspire me — Gene Wolfe, M. John Harrison, China Miéville — and remind myself that there are millions of people in the world whose interest they can't hold, who set their books and stories down after two pages and move on without looking back. Not everybody has to catch what I'm pitching. To quote Joel Hodgson (another personal hero), "We never ask, 'Who’s gonna get this?' We always say, 'The right people will get this'."

Now I just gotta find the right people.

Welcome to the Palace; please enjoy the Slow

I am convinced, at this moment, that my future success as a writer depends on choosing exactly the right fonts for this blog. Mountains of Christmas and Kranky? Sure, why not. I haven't even begun to think about favicons. The writing life is complicated.

I recently wrote a book, called The Slow Palace. It's set in an empire in which time moves more and more slowly as you progress toward the center, meaning, among other things, that the Emperor has been ruling for twelve hundred years or so. A clockmaker named Scrutiny is propelled by love and promises and guilt toward the center of the Empire, which leads him to war, secrets, murder, monasteries, religious heterodoxy, barbarians, ghosts, saints, and chickens. I'm in the shopping-it-to-agents phase.

I'm just beginning another book, which doesn't have a title yet. I know a few things about it — the fundamental structure, the identities and issues of the protagonist and her foil, the underlying conceit about the way the world works, a couple of set pieces and settings. I know it's about taboos, and draws inspiration from things I heard China Miéville say at the Brattle Theater and a passage in Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun. I know it will include caterpillar inflation. I know it's set in a world that's much like our own, and a city that's much like Boston, because I want to be able to mine my day-to-day experiences of life in the city. I did a bit of that for The Slow Palace, but its historical setting meant I mostly trawled for inspiration in books and museums and ancient Italian churches. Now, I get to be a magnet moving through the city, collecting whatever needles and pins jump up and stick to me. Soon I will be spined and glittering.

Between novels, I wrote a short story or novelette (~8200 words) called The Mayor's Skin. It's sort of a D&D nostalgia piece, sort of a dark fairy tale, sort of a trip to a museum of natural history — but not really any of those things. It's currently in the mail.

There's my introductory post. Thanks for visiting.