Eric James Stone

I just got an email from Orson Scott Card, saying he’s buying two of my stories for his new online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

One of the stories is “Salt of Judas,” which was my Writers of the Future workshop 24-hour story back in 2004. (I’ve since revised it.) The story is a fantasy about an oil painter in the Middle Ages who gets some rather unusual supplies from the new apothecary.

The other story is “Taint of Treason,” a very short fantasy story about a teenager who is supposed to execute his innocent father in order to prove his blood is not tainted by treason.

OSC’s magazine will launch this fall. I’m not sure if my stories will be in the first and/or second issue.

Or at least, Utah is shrinking.

The exits from Interstate 15 are numbered according to how many miles they are from where I-15 enters Utah from the south. So, for example, since the Lehi exit was marked as #282, that meant it was 282 miles from the border with Arizona (as the crow follows the Interstate.)

But the Lehi exit was recently changed from 282 to 279, which means it is now only 279 miles to Arizona — three miles less than it used to be.

Thus, Utah must be shrinking.

Of course, the government doesn’t want to start a panic, so it has a different “explanation.”

I’ve been working on a historical short story, and as part of my research I found this site, which has a calculator to tell you the day of the week for any date back to Monday, January 1, 4713 B.C., and forward to Saturday, December 28, 24660198799805 A.D. (but it doesn’t take into account future adjustments for the slowing of the Earth’s rotation — nor, presumably, the swallowing of the Earth by the sun in its red giant phase. And if you’re planning to write a story that takes place after our sun has cooled from a white dwarf to a black dwarf, that shouldn’t happen until sometime after Saturday, December 28, 24660198799805 A.D., so you’re just plain out of luck if you want to be accurate about which day of the week your story happens on. Then again, who’s likely to call you on it if you say it was Sunday, March 15, 73234823625144665 A.D.?)

It automatically adjusts for the switch between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, although you have to manually force Julian when needed for dates in places that were later in switching.

Actually, now that I think about it, I can tell you that March 15 will fall on a Wednesday in 73234823625144665 A.D. It’s rather simple to check, in fact.

KJA = Kevin J. Anderson
RM = Rebecca Moesta
JP = Jerry Pournelle
JL = Jay Lake
RS = Robert Sawyer
LN = Larry Niven

KJA: “Things I Wish Some Writing Pro Had Told Me When I First Started Out”
RM: Heinlein’s rules of writing
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it’s sold.
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OK, the notes aren’t very good today (not that they were all that good to begin with) because I only got three hours of sleep last night due to working on my story. I was lucky — my roommate, Scott Roberts, stayed up all night working on his story.

AM=Anne McCaffrey

AM: You may not make a lot of money as a writer, but there’s great satisfaction in seeing your name on a book.
“You’re a writer when you can’t not write.” (A double negative only strengthens the positive.)
I submitted a lot of books before I sold my first.
One of the nice things about the science fiction field is we’re always willing to welcome new people.
Keep a record of the characteristics of each character.
If there’s a subject you don’t know much about, find an expert to help. Be sure to have your expert read the portions of your story that relate to his expertise.

SW=Sean Williams

SW: With regard to the advice you hear, take what you need and leave the rest. But remember the rest, because you might need it later.
I submitted to WOTF every quarter. It took me ten entries to win.
“Quit now, you’ll never make it. If you ignore this advice, you’re halfway there.” — David Zucker
Be a part of the SF community.
If you’re writing something that you’re not enjoying, readers can pick up on that.

CB=Charles Brown (Publisher of Locus)

CB: The average full-time writer makes $4000/year.
If you don’t want to sit down and write every day, don’t be a writer.
Learn to write short fiction; your novels will be better.

Not much today — we spent most of the morning doing research, and in the afternoon were told to start writing our stories.

TP: One of the advantages of using historical places/times is that the world is already created. You may have to research, but you don’t have to make up the world.
KDW: Be open to things you didn’t think you were looking for.
TP: Why Google isn’t as good as library. Full text books contain a lot of information, and much of it is not on the Internet. Also, the ability of anyone to publish on the internet makes the information a bit less reliable. Internet is best for researching specific facts you know you need, rather than more general research.
Don’t use the shortcut of main character is an author.
Old travel guide books can be useful & cheap.
“If it’s less than the best you can do, it’s no good.”

These notes are raw and may not make much sense.

TP: Research.
Any aliens you cook up should be at least as alien as any culture on earth.
You can’t do specific research until you know what a story is about. But it’s also very important to do general research just to know stuff.
See Avon collections of Asimov F&SF columns.
Any book called “Day to Day Life in?”
Read a lot of non-fiction.
Obvious reason to do research is to avoid letters from readers that point out factual flaws. But you can’t satisfy them.
So the real reason to do research is to find cool details and even plots.
Plots that arise from general research tend to be organic — fitting the details.
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These notes are raw and unpolished. They are not comprehensive. No warranty, express or implied, is made regarding these notes. Your mileage may vary.

Key:
TP - Tim Powers
KDW - K. D. Wentworth
LRH - L. Ron Hubbard

Read LRH Article on “suspense.” Key point: “Keep your reader wondering which of two things will happen ? and you get his interest.”

TP: One of the things Budrys says is that you may have a great idea in your head, but since we’re not telepaths, you need to translate story to black marks so reader can recreate story in their head. You want reader to forget writer, forget chair, and be in world of the story. In order to make it a vicarious experience for the readers, you need to picture it clearly yourself. Maybe draw floor plans. Must think about is it a sunny day or a cloudy?
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Thanks to my story “Betrayer of Trees,” I’ll be spending the next week at the Writers of the Future workshop, which culminates in the awards ceremony Friday evening at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.

I’ve been looking forward to this for the past year, as I had a great time at the workshop last year.