DOUGLAS SMITH | Writing the Fantastic

One of the key themes in my novel, The Wolf at the End of the World, is that of protecting our natural environment and specifically the habitats of our wild animals. If that topic also concerns and interests you, then I think you'll enjoy (and be encouraged) by this fascinating TED talk by George Monbiot. Monbiot discusses the many postive and seemingly (at first) counter-intuitive benefits that occurred when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the US.

As Wisakejack tells Zach in my novel, "everything's connected." We humans don't yet understand how complex the natural food chains in this world are (or were). His talk and his suggestions that we need to "rewild our world" give some hope that we can restore the complexity of these chains and in so doing heal the natural environments that we have ravaged--the environments that we rely on as well.

My first collection, Impossibilia, which was a finalist for the Aurora Award in 2009, is now available in trade paperback. The book was originally published in jacketed hardcover and hardcover limited editions, both numbered and signed, by the award-winning UK press, PS Publishing. An ebook edition was later released, and now I am pleased to have a trade edition available.

See this Impossibila page for full buying links.

Impossibilia contains the Aurora winning novelette, "Spirit Dance," which is the precursor story to my novel The Wolf at the End of the World. It also contains the Aurora finalist story, "A Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh" and one of my Springsteen-inspired stories, "Going Down to Lucky Town." I hope you'll check it out.

I'll be at Ad Astra, the long-running Toronto SF&F convention, this coming weekend, April 4-6. This year, the con is at the Sheraton Parkway North hotel (600 Highway7 East, Richmond Hill, Ontario). More info on the Ad Astra site. 

Here's my schedule for the weekend:

Friday April 4:

• 8:30-9pm -- Reading (Oakridges room)
• 10-11pm -- Panel: Non-European Fantasy Worlds (Richmond C-D)
• 11pm-midnight -- Panel: Indigenous Futurism (Markham A)

​Saturday April 5:

• 2-4pm -- Author Signings (Richmond A)
• 9-10pm -- Panel: Veronica Mars movie (Markham A)

Sunday April 6:

• 1-2pm -- SF Canada table (Dealer's Room)
• 3-4pm -- Panel: Rejectomancy (Newmarket room)

Weekend and day passes are available for the con. If you're in the area, I'll hope you'll drop by.

I wrote earlier about my sale in late 2013 of one of my early Heroka stories, "Dream Flight," to The Dark Magazine, a new dark fantasy online magazine. Issue #3 with "Dream Flight" came out in January. Here's a link to where you can buy the story as an ebook. 

The story was only the third one I ever wrote, so be gentle. It was also the third of my Heroka stories. "Dream Flight" is a sequel of sorts to the earlier "A Bird in the Hand," which appeared in Warrior Wisewoman 2 in 2010. But you don't need to have read "A Bird in the Hand" to enjoy "Dream Flight." Both of these stories appear in my translated collection, La Danse des Esprits. 

My first Heroka story, "Spirit Dance" (the inspiration for my Heroka novel, The Wolf at the End of the World) is also available as an ebook and is included in my first collection, Impossibilia.  

I was one of three authors at the Toronto ChiZine reading series event at The Round in Kensington last week. Here's a pic of me reading from THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD on my Kobo.

The other authors were Terri Favro (THE PROXY BRIDE) and Stan Rogal (OBSESSIONS), who did two wonderful readings. In between the readings, we were all entertained by two incredibly talented performers: Kari Maaren, the ChiSeries Toronto's resident ukelele comedienne (Album: BEOWULF PULLED MY ARM OFF) and Peter Chiykowski (co-creator of the Kickstarter darling, HALF-CAT).

Thanks to Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory, co-publisher / owners of ChiZine, for hosting this series and for including me in the lineup. And thanks to everyone who came out.

The Round has been completely renovated since my last visit when it was the Augusta House. It makes a great venue for this type of evening. Comfortable and intimate, with a good stage and sound, lots of seating and room to move around and mix and meet, and very gracious hosts.

Publishers Weekly, the "bible of the book business," has reviewed my debut novel, The Wolf at the End of the World. Here are the highlights:

"Smith (Chimerascope) has a thorough grounding in Native American lore, and this creates an immersive and enjoyable reading experience. Readers will delight in learning more about Native American mythology, which is skillfully woven throughout the story. Smith's novel is both well paced and deftly plotted—leaving readers curious about what comes next for the Heroka in the modern world."

You can read the whole review here and buy The Wolf at the End of the World here

In 2013, I wrote a 32-part (still surprised I had that much to say!) series for Amazing Stories on how to market and sell short fiction. One of my key pieces of advice in that series, which I dealt with in Part 15, was to keep your work in the mail. Don't worry about the story being rejected. Don't worry about the number of rejections it accumulates. Don't worry about how long the story has been circulating. As long as you can find a professional market to send that story to, keep sending it out.

Now in case you wonder if I always follow my own advice, I present for your amusement and edification a recent experience.

Back in November, I sold a story called "Dream Flight" to the new professional magazine The Dark, which is edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace. My story will appear in issue #3 in February, and the very awesome cover is displayed at the right. Even better, I just received the table of contents and discovered that "Dream Flight" will be the lead story.

Excellent and wonderful. It's always a thrill to sell a story, and especially to appear in a new magazine. I've always loved this story, and knew that it would eventually find a home. But this sale brought a special thrill, since I'd written "Dream Flight," well, a while ago. 

So how long did it take me to sell this tale?

Wait for it...

Seventeen years. Yep, seventeen years. It was the second story that I ever wrote, and the second of three Heroka stories that I've written (the Heroka are my shapeshifters who also appear in my novel, The Wolf at the End of the World).  How many rejections did it accumulate over those seventeen years? Sixty-four.

But I never gave up on it. I kept it in the mail (or, in recent years, the email). And it finally paid off with a sale to a pro market, a lead story, and my name on the cover.

Never give up. Never surrender. And keep it in the mail.

A note on rights for beginning short fiction writers: If you've read my Amazing Stories series, you'll know that I spent a lot of time on making sure that new writers understand the issue of licensing rights for your fiction. Related to that, "Dream Flight" had been published previously, but only in French (in France (Tenebres) and Quebec (Solaris)). It had never been published in English before, so I still retained the First English Rights that The Dark required to purchase the story. 

[Update: When I signed my contract for "Dream Flight," The Dark was paying professional rates. However, since then, The Dark has dropped its pay rate to three cents a word, so is now classified as a semi-pro market. Another example of the vagaries and challenges of the short fiction market.]

I wrote earlier about a 3-part series that fellow writer, Zainab Amadahy, was writing for Muskrat Magazine about the lack of cultural diversity in the typical science fiction & fantasy convention. My prior post had links to the first two parts in the series. Zainab has now posted the third and final part in her series, in which she provides some excellent ideas for possibile panel topics that explore the issue of how to introduce greater diversity into not only SF&F conventions, but also the literature, the publishing industry, and our society and way of thinking. I hope that you'll check it out. I'm also hoping that maybe we can suggest some of these panels for an upcoming Toronto convention, such as the always excellent Ad Astra, in April 4-6, 2014.

I wrote recently on this blog about my cultural appropriation concerns when I was researching and writing my novel, The Wolf at the End of the World, which deals with and incorporates Anishinabe (specifically, Ojibwe) and Cree characters, stories, traditions, and issues, all around a theme of environment destruction and loss of animal habitat.

In November, I had the pleasure of meeting Zainab Amadahy, a fellow novelist and (among many other things) a writer for Muskrat Magazine, when she attended the launch for the book in Toronto.

A frequent discussion point around SF&F literature relates to its traditional domination by white writers of European ancestry (I could add "male" to that list, but that's not to the point of this post). Zainab is writing a three-part series for Muskrat, that she describes as follows:

What I’d like to offer in the next three segments are some suggestions to Science Fiction and Fantasy convention organizers everywhere who might be interested in growing and diversifying their events. Part one of this blog will outline the issue. Part two offers solutions and approaches. Part three will contain concrete suggestions for panel titles. 

Part one of her series outlines her own experiences (some positive, but mostly not) stemming from the typical lack of ethnic diversity at SF conventions. Happily, she cites my book launch as one of the positive experiences.

In part two of the series, just posted today, Zainab explores ways of diversifying events and discusses why diversifying your con might be important.

I'm not sure I'm in full agreement with her point #5 in part 2. If you tell a con organizer that something needs to be fixed, you're generally going to be invited to join in trying to fix it. Cons are volunteer-run, fan-funded operations that can always use extra help. And being invited in is a good thing, since it implies interest in solving the problem--and fixing an organizational problem is generally easier from the inside.

But beyond that, I'm in strong agreement that much can be done to make SF&F cons more ethnically and culturally diverse and inviting.

I'll post the link to the third part in Zainab's series when it goes up. I hope you'll check out the posts and leave Zainab a comment. Feel free to leave a comment here as well.

“When we understand each other's stories, we understand everything a little better—even ourselves.”

—Someplace to be Flying, Charles de Lint

This will be a long post, but for me, it's an important one. I'm basing this post on the afterword that I include in my new novel, The Wolf at the End of the World. However, since a potential reader, especially a First Nations reader, may have concerns over the issue I address here (and therefore not read the book), I'm posting that afterword here.

On the Origin of The Wolf at the End of the World

My intent for writing this post is primarily to address a fear I had about writing The Wolf at the End of the World.  But before I can get into that, I need to first talk about the book's genesis.

The first story I wrote (and sold) professionally was the novelette “Spirit Dance.” In it, we first meet my shapeshifting species, the Heroka, as well as my hero, Gwyn Blaidd and many of the other characters of The Wolf. That story takes place five years before the events in The Wolf. “Spirit Dance” was my first professional sale. It appeared in the anthology, Tesseracts6 in 1997, was a finalist for the Aurora Award in 1998, and won the Aurora Award in 2001 when it was translated into French. It’s been republished seven times in English and translated another sixteen times. Yes, the story totally rocks, and you should check it out.

I always planned to revisit the world and characters of “Spirit Dance,” so when I finally decided to write my first novel, continuing Gwyn’s story was an obvious choice.

On Writing About Another Culture

Now to my fear about writing The Wolf at the End of the World. I’m a white male of European descent (English, Welsh, Irish) who is writing about Cree and Ojibwe culture, traditions, and beliefs. Any author who writes about a current culture other than their own risks being accused of cultural appropriation.

That risk is even greater if the writer belongs to the majority that has traditionally held power in their society and is writing about a minority group in that society. It becomes greater still when that majority has oppressed that minority for nearly a quarter of a millennium, as the First Nations people have been since the Europeans first arrived in this land. My ancestors stole their land, broke treaty after treaty, and introduced programs and policies consciously designed to destroy their rich and unique culture and way of life.