Some publishing news: my short story “In Open Air” will be published in the upcoming anthology Leadership Gone Right.
Leadership Gone Right, edited by D. A. D’Amico and published by Farthest Star Publishing, aims to tell stories that “envision a world where leadership takes a different path, where heroes and anti-heroes emerge in unexpected ways,” according to the initial announcement.
I was happy to find a home for “In Open Air,” which originally appeared in Accessing the Future, in this anthology. Part of the story hinges on the rotating leadership structure of a generation ship that has finally made it to its destination planet — but an unexpected arrival forces a crisis and the right course of action is anything but clear.
The full lineup of authors and stories for the anthology can be found here. The book is set for release in April 2024. I’ll be sure to announce it here when it’s available!
Well, January may almost be over, but it’s not too late to post some writing goals for 2024. I hope!
I’ve been focusing on getting some novel manuscripts written, revised, and/or polished in recent years, and I let short fiction submissions fall by the wayside. Which is too bad, considering there are a number that I never found homes for.
So, in the interests of getting short stories out there, I decided to do a few things. One: write new stories. Two: revise old stories that were never published. Three: send out previously published stories to markets that take reprints. In other words: submit, submit, submit!
A werewolf figure from An American Werewolf in London prowls over two new short stories.
It was fun to log back in the Submission Grinder for the first time in ages, and start logging new submissions. Having written a couple of new stories at the tail end of 2023, and another at the beginning of 2024, I decided to aim high. My goal for 2024? Twelve new publication credits, either first publication or reprint. I’m not fussy! There are a lot of great magazines and anthologies out there, and I want my work in as many of them as I can manage.
I had kind of forgotten how much work it can be to find just the right market or submissions call for a particular story, and then making sure your submission package matches all the requirements. And then: the obsessive checking of email, Moksha, or Submission Grinder to see if there are any new responses. Spoiler alert: having a lot of stories out on sub does not mean an avalanche of writing correspondence.
However, I have a number of secondary markets lined up for each story I sent out, so the inevitable rejections aren’t so terrible — I can just send the story out to the next possible home. And new submission calls, special issues, and anthologies crop up all the time. I figured that to get to a dozen new publication credits this year, I would need to keep at least that many stories out on submission at all times. Right now I’ve got 14. I also have a few more unpublished stories I still like that could use an overhaul. So with a few more drafts apiece, I’ll get those ready to send out as well.
Of course, the goal is to get to zero submissions, meaning every story has found a home somewhere. Maybe I’ll get there! Then again, I plan to keep writing new stories. We’ll see where we are by December 31…
L.K. Bertram’s new book on Icelandic immigrants to Canada and the United States is a fascinating look at a culture that persists in spite of, and in some ways because of, assimilation.
In each chapter, Bertram looks at the evolving Icelandic identity through a different lens. Clothing, food, drink, folklore and language are each considered. She shows how early immigrants sought to succeed, and how their descendants built upon those successes in the face of changing pressures from the dominant culture.
Clothes make the immigrant
Her exploration of clothing is of particular interest. Traditional Icelandic outfits, such as the peysuföt still worn today by women on formal occasions both in Iceland as well as in North America, is sometimes seen as static and unchanging: a link to the past. She documents how this distinctive dress was created as part of Iceland’s struggle in the 19th century to define its culture against that of the Danes who ruled their country. Further, she shows how Icelandic immigrants abandoned aspects of that ensemble in North America, particularly the skotthúfa (a tasselled skull cap).
“Although many migrant women had eagerly embraced these
fashions at home in Iceland,” she writes, “it became clear when they arrived in
North America that this clothing, including the ‘peculiar’ skotthúfa, could
represent something different, a marker of excessive ethnic and racial
difference in the eyes of white, Anglophone North Americans.”
But her treatment of clothing is much deeper than what is marked as “traditional” by Icelanders and their descendants. She shows how adopting new styles was crucial for Icelandic immigrants. Those who settled on the Manitoba prairie, including on Lake Winnipeg, soon began wearing clothing more effective against the bitter cold. That included moccasins and garments made by Cree, Ojibwe and Métis artisans. Those who settled in large urban settlements such as Winnipeg abandoned clothing that marked them as foreign. They began wearing styles in conformity with the dominant Anglo society as a way to both gain employment and avoid discrimination.
Immigrants and colonialism
The book also examines the changing relationship between First Nations and Icelandic settlers. Bertram looks at the well-known (among Icelandic-Canadians) relationship between John Ramsay and the Icelanders at what is now Riverton. Ramsay, a prominent member of the Salteaux and Cree community living there, had petitioned the Canadian government for land rights, only to find the government had granted them to the Icelanders. Despite conflict between the two groups, Ramsay helped the Icelanders survive. Both his community and the Icelanders’ suffered a devastating outbreak of smallpox, likely picked up by the Icelandic immigrants as they passed through Quebec.
“Although individual Icelanders might have had positive personal relationships with their Cree, Ojibwe and Métis neighbours at certain times,” Bertram writes, “the Icelanders overall were very aware of and, in many respects, dependent on the appropriation of Indigenous land by the Canadian and American governments and the violent state repression of organized Indigenous resistance in the late nineteenth century.”
A decent cup of coffee
In another chapter, she looks at two important Icelandic beverages: coffee and alcohol. Early arrivals to Canada were frustrated at the lack of good quality coffee in a nation where tea was dominant. Thus, the customs that grew up around procuring and preparing coffee as good as they were accustomed to in Iceland became a part of the Icelandic identity in North America. (Especially interesting is the continuing practice of brewing coffee through a “sock,” which was the only way I knew how to do it until finally getting a coffee maker as an adult.)
Alcohol was more problematic, given its prevalence among male social culture in the decades following the Icelandic immigrants’ initial arrival. Its negative effects on how Icelanders were perceived led to many joining the burgeoning temperance movements in the early 20th century.
Bertram also shows how Icelanders and their descendants managed public perception of themselves and their culture. Xenophobia during the First and Second World Wars added to pressures to assimilate and not be seen as dangerous or too foreign. She shows how this led to a celebration, and mythologization, of a “Viking” identity.
Vínarterta, an ‘Icelandic’ icon
Appropriately, Bertram gives one defining aspect of Icelandic culture in North America its own chapter: vínarterta.
This layered prune torte that has become synonymous with
“Icelandic” culture in North America had an unlikely path to stardom. Bertram
traces the dessert’s origins in the 1700s as the “Vienna torte,” which then found
popularity in Denmark, and thence to Iceland. There, it was popular during the early
waves of emigration to North America. In Canada and the United States,
vínarterta lived on as an ethnic Icelandic food. But in Iceland, it fell out of
fashion and all but disappeared.
Interestingly, while the original versions called for experimentation in fillings and thickness of pastry layers, the recipe ossified in North America. That is, many Icelandic families’ versions became set as the “traditional” recipe. It was a matter of intense debate how many layers one should have, and whether anything but prune filling constituted a “real” vínarterta. (Bertram also includes an appendix with various versions of published recipes, including the early Viennese one.) It might be that I’ve eaten a lot of vínarterta in my life — and enjoy making it! — but this chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
Overall, Bertram’s The Viking Immigrants is a welcome addition to the growing body of historiography of the Icelandic diaspora. It goes beyond community histories and explores multiple themes in the context of emigration, colonialism, settlement, and assimilation, over multiple generations. It’s well worth picking up for anyone of Icelandic descent — as well as for the serious student of immigrant cultures in North America.
Thanks to COVID-19, there are new protocols for just about everything, and that includes book readings and other author events. In the before-times, I had a great time attending the launch for Parallel Prairies: Stories of Manitoba Speculative Fiction. Now, however, if we want to do a public event, doing it by video is the safer way to go. Fortunately, that’s exactly what Anita Daher has organized through Manitoba Book Jam. The event will be held this week, on Thursday, Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. CT.
Parallel Prairies
I’m one of six authors for the evening. I’ll be reading from my short story in the anthology, “The Comments Gaze Also Into You.” (It’s an urban fantasy story about holding online trolls accountable. Can’t imagine how that might be relevant these days.) The other authors taking part are Jonathan Ball, S.M. Beiko, Adam Petrash, Darren Ridgley, and Craig Russell. Live music will be provided at the intermission by Alana Levandoski. The anthology was edited by Darren Ridgley and Adam Petrash, and published by Great Plains Books / Enfield and Wizenty. Each author will have about five minutes during the hour-long event.
If you want to watch and listen via Zoom, you can register for the event here. Registration is free, but please consider picking up a copy of the book, or one of the other books by the participating authors! (I should add that Zoom attendees to the event are eligible for a $25 McNally Robinson Booksellers gift certificate draw.) There is more information on the event’s Facebook page, where people can also watch the video of the event.
So: if you’re looking for some book-related diversion this week, tune in on Thursday and listen to a half-dozen prairie authors read from their weird, wonderful work. Hope to see you there!
I’ve been meaning to write a writing-related post for, oh….
since the Before Times. But part of what has made even that so difficult is the
same thing that has made it hard to do anything creative as the COVID-19 pandemic
hits different parts of the world: worry.
I don’t find I have been worrying all the time about the
coronavirus, but living in a state of taking precautions, shifting all kinds of
routines and daily life, and not being able to make long-term plans (and
cancelling many plans already on the books), makes it hard to, say, write a
novel.
So… I picked necessary but not-exhausting tasks.
Proofing and line editing A Taste of Home in the spring — I always catch more when I a) read it out loud and b) mark up a print copy.
In the spring, I read aloud the MS for my Icelandic-folkore-collides-with-Canadian-real-estate-practices novel, A Taste of Home, marking line edits and corrections. That took a few weeks. Then I went through the MS and made all the changes. Another few days. In May, I dusted off the Excel spreadsheet of people I planned to query on it, and started working up query letters.
Also, since finishing the latest round of submissions for my 1980s heavy metal werewolf novel Bark at the Moon, I was fortunate enough to get feedback from awesome critique partners Angélique Jamail and Sarah Warburton. Taking their suggestions to heart, I turned my attention to tweaking and making a few big shifts to that MS.
And, since #PitMad was coming up in June, I worked on some new Twitter pitches… for both novels! Why not? Seriously, why not. It was more complete-able than jumping back into my current WIP, the haunted-threatre novel Venue 13, which had stalled months ago when I put all my attention into substantive rewrites for A Taste of Home.
Over the summer, thanks to the Twitter recommendation of Delilah Dawson, I picked up Lisa Cron’s Story Genius. As someone who likes to write big ideas, and work out plot, but often falls down in the (many) early drafts on characterization, I really, really want to try her approach as I overhauled Venue 13. I ended up abandoning the 90-odd pages I’d already written, and started over from scratch.
Following the approach recommended in Story Genius, it’s taken me much longer than usual to get to a point where I’m writing the draft of the novel. But I don’t know whether that’s owing to trying a new method, or the background stress of the whole year. I’ll probably blog about what it’s like for me to take an approach that sees you figuring out major character motivations and conflicts before you start drafting, rather than my usual method of starting to figure that out after three or four drafts.
Also during the summer, I worked on a cover for Bark at the Moon so I could submit it to an online reading platform. It was a lot of fun to bust out my pen and ink for the first time in years and dust off some old Photoshop skills! But alas, getting things just right on the cover took me longer than I thought, and I missed the submission window. Maybe I’ll blog about that later, too, and show off the cover. I’m happy with the way it turned out.
A section of what I came up with for a cover for Bark at the Moon.
Currently I’m still querying and submitting A Taste of Home, and writing the first draft of Venue 13. I wish I’d gotten more writing done this year — but I’m not complaining. The pandemic has messed up everyone’s plans, and tragically so for far too many.
I suspect all of the above (writing-wise) is a consequence
of having just enough energy and attention-span bandwidth to work on small,
concrete tasks, but not necessarily enough for huge, open-ended tasks like
writing the first draft of a novel.
I will not get into all the other (good, useful, non-writing) projects I got into over the past year — those were mostly for my mental health in being able to keep “busy” without dwelling on the pandemic 24/7. But hey, now I can make and can jam, build raised garden beds, and er, clean the basement (just kidding, the basement never stays clean — that’s more a Sysiphean task that borders on open-ended).
One of the projects keeping me occupied in 2020 was building this composter.
In Manitoba, it we had a relatively mild first wave of COVID-19, but a much more serious second wave. And even in our province, which initially saw fewer cases and fewer deaths from the coronavirus than other jurisdictions, there have been many job losses and a lot of economic hardship. In that context, I found it very hard to focus and start working on a new novel.
So who knows? I count myself lucky to have escaped some of
the worst effects of the pandemic, and I salute all those writers out there who
were able to get anything done. With any luck, the next year will be better for
all of us.
As recent Metal Monday posts show, I lately became a big fan of the Killer Dwarfs. I’ve loved their songs since first seeing the video for “Keep the Spirit Alive” waaaaayyy back in the winter of 1986-87. But it was seeing them live not just once, but twice, within a year in 2019 that got me hooked. I began searching out their back catalogue. Easier said than done! And sadly, there is no Killer Dwarfs box set. So… I made one.
Homemade Killer Dwarfs box set by David Jón Fuller / Photo by Mike Aporius
To start with, I’d been fortunate enough to pick up their 2013 album Start @ One, and their 2018 live album Live, No Guff! at one of their shows. I bought Russ Dwarf’s Wireless at another show. But finding the Dwarfs’ earlier albums is something of a challenge.
The signature crate from the Killer Dwarfs’ popular video for “Keep the Spirit Alive,” in which the hapless Russ Dwarf suffers many misadventures.
I had never bought Stand Tall when it came out, despite “Keep the Spirit Alive” being one of my favourite songs, nor Big Deal, despite the brilliance of the video for “We Stand Alone.” However, thanks to searching out music stores and resellers online, I was able to put together most of a collection on CD. Stand Tall and Reunion of Scribes — Live 2001, were by far the hardest to come by.
Sometime around the second Dwarfs show I went to, in late 2019, I started thinking: of all the bands that have released box sets, who better than the Killer Dwarfs, whose signature crate would make the perfect case for it? But as mentioned above, there is no Killer Dwarfs box set. If you’ve searched for one online and ended up here, you already know that.
So, being in no way a carpenter or marketing genius, I decided to make one. Here’s how I did it.
Filling your Killer Dwarfs box set — the albums
Obviously, it’s not a box set unless it is in some sense “complete.” So, absent any bootlegs, I figured I needed:
The easiest way I found to get the recent CDs (i.e., released since 2013) was at the Killer Dwarfs’ live shows. (I’ve tried ordering other CDs through their Bandcamp site, but just cannot get it to work.) They really ought to sell their complete back catalogue at each performance (hint, hint).
The hardest albums to track down on CD were Stand Tall and Reunion of Scribes — Live 2001. Good luck finding either for less than $200! I found the first on eBay, eventually (search early, search often). The seller was in Russia, and it was going for around 10 bucks… so for that price, either it’s not a collector’s item there or this is some kind of copy — which, upon receiving it, I think it likely is. But the sound quality was fine and I have the original album on vinyl, anyway! I just wanted to have a complete collection to go in the crate.
The second hard-to-find album is one I have now owned three times. I reviewed Reunion of Scribes for Uptown magazine when it came out in 2002, but it wasn’t my favourite album, so I gave it away. (It’s a decision I rue now). Recently I tried many used record and CD stores, locally and online, to no avail. To make a long story short, I bought a digital copy from Russ Dwarf’s Bandcamp page, and then, ironically, found the CD for a decent price from a seller on Discogs the very next day — so I bought that too.
Designing a Killer Dwarfs box set
First, I figured out how big to make it. I chose to make it a cube with enough room to hold at least 10 CDs, to allow room for the entire Killer Dwarfs back catalogue, as well as a future album or two.
Then I had to figure out materials. I thought of building it around a plastic CD rack, but couldn’t scrounge one that would work. I decided to go with lightweight wood.
The crate from the video for the Killer Dwarfs’ “We Stand Alone” is clearly built to a different scale than in the previous music video, but it had a clearer image of the front lettering.
For the inner box to hold the CDs, I went with ¼-inch fir “good one side” plywood. For the outer appearance of the crate, I took screen captures from the videos for “Keep the Spirit Alive” and “We Stand Alone” and stumbled onto a workable selection of materials in my basement: ¼-inch wood panelling, which on its unfinished side looks like “crate” material, and wooden stir-sticks for paint that could look like framing.
Fortunately the folks at Rona were willing to sell me a
bunch of long stir-sticks that were also ¼-inch thick, making the math of
figuring out how the materials would work together way easier (and, it looked
better than a thinner stir-stick like the ones I had).
I looked up online some ways to build small wooden crates,
but to be honest, since I’m no carpenter (see above) and since the look of the
crate in both videos, while slightly different, isn’t particularly finished, I
didn’t go for any complex, jewellery box detail in the assembly. Let me say
here that all the apparent blemishes and mistakes in the final look of my CD
crate were TOTALLY INTENTIONAL AND AESTHETICALLY NECESSARY.
Anyway.
Pieces for the inner crate of the Killer Dwarfs box set
Building a Killer Dwarfs box set
I cut pieces of ¼-inch plywood for the interior box. I cut them so the outer dimensions of that cube would be 6 ½ inches — so the top and bottom pieces were 6 ½ inches square, two sides were 6 ½ inches by 6 inches, and two sides were 6 by 6 inches.
The inner crate had to fit all the Killer Dwarfs albums on CD.
I always dry-fit pieces before I try to put them together
since I am Not A Carpenter ™ and don’t fully trust that my designs will work
before I put them together. Also, I was figuring this out mostly as I built.
Lots of measuring and re-measuring. By the way, building a cube that is
perfectly square on all sides when you don’t have a working table saw is SUPER
HARD.
I painted the interior walls black.
I decided to add something a little extra on the bottom — a
Killer Dwarfs logo. I found one online, printed it out large, and then scaled
it to fit, using a geometry set and a bit of junior high algebra. Then I did
the lettering on the wood in pencil as well as I could.
I scaled down and drew the Killer Dwarfs logo by hand.
After I had tweaked the imperfections in the logo, I painted
it black. After it dried, I erased more of the visible pencil lines and painted
a second coat.
I put two pairs of sides together with glue, and when that had set, I glued each two-side pair to the other and used elastic bands to keep pressure on the joints as they set.
I painted the interior sides black, and glued all the pieces together.
Then I glued the four-side construction to the bottom. The
front side showed no joins, since I wanted to use the fake “slats” I would be
adding to the sides to help hold the joined side of the inner cube together. To
be honest, given the number of pieces of wood I would be adding and gluing, I’m
not sure it would have made a difference. But since the wood was all too thin
for me to nail, I wanted to make sure it had as much strength as I could.
Making the “slats” of the crate meant cutting the stir sticks so I could have a square frame, which would go over the horizontal slats.
I used long paint stir sticks to make the slats and “frame” of the outer crate.
I painted the outside of the interior box black where it would show through the slats. That was for the illusion of it being dark inside, as well as allowing the glue to hold directly to wood on both sides, instead of paint.
I used elastic bands instead of a clamp to hold the slats tight while the glue set.
Once both sides were done, I started working on the bottom,
using the 1/4 –inch panelling. It was just right for the dimensions I needed.
In a perfect world I could have cut the tongue and the groove off the edge, I
suppose, but it looked pretty good to me.
I used tongue-and-groove siding, with the rough side out, to get the look of an unfinished crate.
The back and the front were also ¼-inch panelling, running horizontal. This duplicated the look of the crate, in my opinion, and let me cut the tongue and groove off the top and bottom for a more finished look on the top.
I put the back on first, partly because I needed to paint the front of the crate before gluing it in place.
Painting a Killer Dwarfs box set
For the front, I had to recreate the “DANGER / KiLLeR DWaRf / INSIDE / THIS SIDE UP” signage. I felt the lettering for the front of the crate would be much more difficult than just the logo, so I did it on paper first, using the images from both music videos.
I worked out the lettering for the crate at the scale I needed based on what is visible in the Killer Dwarfs’ videos.
It’s not an exact replica. (And the crates in each video don’t match, either!) But I was pretty happy with doing a rough draft, because it took several tries (and a lot of erasing) to get it right.
I debated using the paper version as a guide only, and re-drawing everything on the wood. Then I thought: maybe I can use it as an actual template.
So I made copies, cut the shapes and letters out, and used that to get the lettering right. I still used a ruler to get the lettering as straight as I could, even with the paper template.
The photocopy of my original lettering made a pretty good stencil after I cut the shapes out with an X-acto knife.
Then I painted the lettering on the front of the crate. I
did two coats.
The front of the crate took the longest to make, due to the lettering work and finding the right shade of red paint.
Once the front was painted, I glued it on. It might have allowed more stability to do the lettering afterward, but I felt it would be much more awkward to letter and paint on the assembled box.
I left the top until the end, in case I had to cut or sand
down the top of the interior CD box to fit within the outside construction.
(Did I mention how hard it is to make everything perfectly square when you
don’t have a table saw?) As well, the wood panelling tended to have curves or
warps in it. Even with the use of clamps when gluing it on, it was not
perfectly flat. (TOTALLY INTENTIONAL.)
And, for the top of the crate, I decided to add a little extra. Leaving it blank would be more accurate to the crate in the music videos, but I thought it needed a Killer Dwarfs logo on it. So I stencilled the name on it and painted it to match the one inside.
Finishing touches
The final touch was to add some Russ-Dwarf-esque hands to the side of the crate. It was harder than I expected. I searched through used toys at the second-hand store, online makers of marionette parts, and eventually stumbled onto a hitherto unknown (to me) fandom, namely ball-jointed dolls. FINALLY, after racking up many a weird search result for “doll hands,” I found a supplier with two that looked like they might work.
I needed them to fit flush with the side of the box, so I used a mitre box and saw to get a nice, flat cut.
I also wasn’t totally happy with the colour of the hands as they were, so I painted them before gluing them between the slats of the side of the crate.
Now, for the finishing touch — I enlisted the help of my friend Mike Aporius to take some “official” shots of the finished product. As you can see, he made it look fantastic.
Homemade Killer Dwarfs box set by David Jón Fuller / Photo by Mike Aporius
So, there you have it. Until there’s an official Killer Dwarfs box set, you’ll just have to make your own. But for me, at least, it was a fun project to work on for several months!
Questions? Comments? Have you ever concocted something for your personal fandom because it didn’t exist yet? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
