Hal-Con Panel Today- Works Updated

Posted on: November 8th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

Today is the first day of Hal-Con, Halifax’s biggest (only?) sci-fi/fantasy/gaming con. I’m just about ready to head over there, but first I wanted to update this website as I plan to hand out lots of business cards/fling them at people’s foreheads until con security kicks me out, and I want to make sure that when people follow the link on the card it leads them to an up-to-date website. So, if I met you at the con, welcome! The ‘Works’ page has been recently updated to list the various manga I have worked on and all of my recent story publishing credits. Clicking ‘Works’ will also send an online order to the closest pizza place to your location and inform them that you want an x-large works, so heads up (it’s a bug I plan to fix shortly, and it will probably be dealt with by the time you read this).

Today I will be giving a panel from 4:15-5:00 in…’Fluffy’s Den’…on editing manga. Tomorrow, also in Fluffy’s Den from 10:00-11:30 I’ll be giving a panel with the very talented Jennifer Young about the business of short story writing. If you are looking for something to do Sunday some friends of mine (including the not just talented but mulch-talented Jenn Young) are putting on a production of House on Haunted Hill. So there’s my vague plan for the con.

Tags: manga, Short stories
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Mail Time!

Posted on: October 27th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

Yesterday I got not one but two packages in the mail.

Package one:

‘Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction’ by Jeff VanderMeer. This book is amazing. I obviously haven’t gotten very far in it seeing as I only got it yesterday (and had to go to work and sleep in the meantime) but I treasure it already. Like a lot of new writers I have a small section of books on writing on my bookshelf but none of them take the visual approach that Wonderbook does. It’s formatted like a textbook but it’s far from anything you’d see in a high school chem class. Wonderbook keeps you on your toes, seeking to teach but also to challenge, gives you advice in a warm tone but with a glint in their eye like someone waiting to see if you’re gullible enough to take the bait. It’s fun, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.

The other thing I got in the mail was this:

It’s the Japanese edition of volume 1 of Gakuen Polizi from Milk Morinaga! This will be the third Morinaga series Seven Seas has published and I’m really proud to be editing the script for it. Seriously, it looks adorable. The plot is a shojo-ai version of 21 Jumpstreet: two female cops go undercover as high school students and fall in love with each other. Is that not the best plot for a manga ever? Do you not understand how rhetorical questions work?

I like getting mail, and yesterday was a pretty good haul. Seriously, I’m as giddy as an 11-year-old getting a letter from Hogwarts, that’s how much I’m fan-girling here. But it’s late now, and the stripes from my Where’s Waldo? costume are starting to give me a headache, so I’m going to call it a night.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

My Life in Bullet Points

Posted on: October 23rd, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

I’ve sold a mystery story to Woman’s World. It stars two of my best friends as detectives solving a case of arson in a small town. If you want to check it out it should be on the stands December 19.
I will be giving two talks at Hal-Con, one at 4:15 on Friday Nov., 8th on Manga Editing, and another on Saturday with the very talented Jennifer Young on SF/F Short Story Writing and Publishing. If you’re going to the con please come and laugh loudly at all my jokes.
My story, ‘You First Meet the Devil at A Church Fete,’ has been translated into Italian and will be released as part of an anthology featuring various award-winning stories. It goes on sale October 31st, so if you can read Italian and like SF/F consider picking up a copy of Enchanted Worlds (featuring my story ‘The First Time You Meet Him in a Parrish,’ as charmingly translated by Google).
I’ve signed up to be a Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo. If you live in the HRM (and if you do you know what I’m talking about) and are thinking of participating in National Novel Writing Month, check out the regional section of the NaNo forums to see what we’re up too.

Tags: I did not spell either 'Municipal' or 'Liaison' right on my first try, manga, Short stories, Writing
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Strange Horizons Fund-Raising Drive

Posted on: September 20th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

Strange Horizons is hosting its annual fund raising drive, and seeing as I just got paid I donated $10 bucks to the pot. If you want to get the warm fuzziess that come from helping out a free, fantastic fiction magazine of great caliber and (momentarily) feeling good about yourself and the state of the world, then please consider donating (if you want to take it to the next level and berate me for not giving more, feel free to donate a larger amount).

SH publishes a lot of great stories, but as far as recent ones go I really enjoyed ‘Din Ba Din’ by Kate MacLeod and A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed) by Seth Dickinson.

Strange Horizons also publishes a boatload of insightful reviews. I read reviews of books I have no intention of reading just because I’ve learned so much about writing from the SH reviewers. For example, Abigail Nussbaum’s review of ‘The Golem and the Jinni‘ poses the question of what the novel gains by being fantastic, a question I often struggle with in my own writing.

Writing this post makes me realize again what a great resource Strange Horizons is. Now I really do feel cheap.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

And, Meanwhile, In My Day Job…

Posted on: September 10th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

In the manga I’m editing I just had to write a footnote explaining that Brazilian soccer player Pelé starred in a 2005 ad about erectile dysfunction.

They say a day’s never wasted when you learn something new, but I’m starting to question that adage.

Tags: This is why it's so hard to explain to my grandma what I do for a living
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

New story in ‘Dandelions on Mars’

Posted on: September 7th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

Various musician friends have told about about a common experience they share: you’re playing the guitar alone in your room when suddenly you hit upon a really catchy melody. You keep at it, making it better and better, until you call in your friends and family or whoever is close at hand to hear it. And as you play your newly improvised song to them, it dawns on you that you’ve heard this music somewhere before. You’re not playing a brand new song of your invention, you’re just playing the guitar part to ‘Lola.’

I think writers have a similar experience. I wrote my story ‘The City Electric’ and was pretty pleased with the finished product, a story of robots and electronics keeping themselves busy long after the fall of man. And then I realized that I had basically just re-written my favourite Ray Bradbury story, ‘There Will Come Soft Rains.’

So I did the only thing I could do, which was sell it to a Bradbury themed anthology.

‘Dandelions on Mars’ came out this summer and can be bought through Lulu here. I haven’t seen a copy of it myself, but you can read a review of the anthology here

Tags: Lola L-O-L-A Lola, Now I have Lola stuck in my head, Reviews, Writing
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Notes on the Clarion Write-a-Thon

Posted on: August 16th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

From June 23 to August 3 I took part in the Clarion-Write-a-Thon. It’s a pretty informal thing, basically a balm for Clarion rejects to soothe their wounded egos (speaking from my own experience), but it also works as a good imperative to get some writing done, especially during the height of summer when the water and sun call for you. You set your own goal (mine was to write a short story each week and to write a movie script) and, if you want, donate money to Clarion. That’s it. It doesn’t really offer too much that you couldn’t do on your own, with you setting up your own time limit and goals and subbing in your favourite charity for Clarion.

But as a writer I am often looking for a community of other writers, so I gave the Write-a-Thon a go. It was surprisingly effective. I wrote five short stories and did a lot of planning for my movie script (all right, when I say surprisingly effective, I mean that I met roughly half of my stated goals. I didn’t write a short story for that last week because I was hit by a nasty ear infection, and as for the movie script…I’m working on it).

Doing the Write-a-Thon made me realize that I had not been taking my writing seriously. Having set goals made it seem like more of a job than a preoccupation. Saying something feels like work is usually a slam against it, but that’s not the case here. For me, making my writing feel like work gave me a sense of satisfaction that I didn’t have before, made my accomplishments measurable.

The other thing that gave me motivation was that a sponsor (okay, so it was my mom) donated money to Clarion on my behalf. Knowing that someone believed in me enough to put money down made me take the Write-a-Thon seriously. Thanks mom!

Tags: A post in my grand tradition of writing about things long after they've happened, Clarion, Short stories
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Review: Half World by Hiromi Goto

Posted on: August 4th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

As part of World’s Without End’s ‘Women in Genre’ challenge I am reading a sci-fi or fantasy novel each month from an author I have never read before. For more information on the challenge visit Worlds Without End.

If you like Neil Gaiman’s novels like ‘Coraline’ and ‘The Graveyard Book’ then ‘Half World’ should be next on your list of books to read. In it, Hiromi Goto creates two full, interesting worlds: the living, human world where Melanie lives with her mother and is harassed by bullies, and then the Half World, a warped cartoony limbo that is half-Bosch half-Warhol.When Melanie’s mother is kidnapped, she must venture into Half World to rescue her.

The highlight of the book is the villain, Mr. Glueskin, a repulsive soul who has managed to become the de facto king of Half World. As sinister and gross as he is, it just made it all the more satisfying when Melanie defeats him. I was especially impressed with how Ms. Goto handled the final conflict between them. Instead of the usual ‘Hero kills the villain, everyone else lives happily ever after,’ we get something more complex here. To say more would be treading into spoiler territory, but I’ll just say it’s nice to see a different type of resolution.

This was a quick read, mainly because it is aimed at a younger audience. My only complaint is that the writing felt a bit slight at times to me (I wanted to linger in places and learn more details) though even in quick strokes Ms. Goto does a good job of quickly sketching out people and places.

Tags: Brevity is the soul of wit and whatever, Review
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Works updated

Posted on: July 20th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

I’ve been keeping myself busy and out of trouble thanks to the Clarion West Write-a-Thon, which I will be posting about very soon. I’ve also been reviewing everything I can get my hands on for The Coast, Halifax’s weekly alternative paper. Usually I review comics and weird documentaries, but lately I’ve been reading enough new book releases to review those. Especially of interest to genre fans would be my review of Lauren Beuke’s latest, The Shining Girls, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s gothic horror The Fifty Year Sword. Earlier in the year I also reviewed Hugh Howey’s Wool omnibus, but that review only ever appeared in print and not online. Here it is for posterity:

The Wool Omnibus is a collection of post-apocalyptic novellas originally published as a series of e-books. Thanks to its popularity among sci-fi fans the series became a hit and has become a success story not only for self-publishing but e-books as well. The story takes place in Silo 18, a humongous underground bunker that reaches deep into the earth. Anyone who causes trouble is sent outside to die on the surface. Wool is a fun read and Howey squeezes the underground setting for maximum claustrophobia. But even though it’s written well it’s hard not to feel like there was a missed opportunity. Wool may be part of the vanguard when it comes to online publishing, but story-wise it covers a lot of the same ground as other post-apocalyptic novels. You end up wishing that the plot was as ground breaking as the format.

Tags: Reviews, Waiting to be impressed by 2013 book releases
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Interzone issue 246 reviews

Posted on: June 17th, 2013 by Shannon Fay No Comments

The May-June 2013 issue of Interzone (which features my story ‘You First Meet the Devil at a Church Fete’) has been out long enough for there to be a few reviews of it on the internets. Here are some snippets concerning my story.

From Anthony G. Williams at SFF blog:

Winner of the James White Award for new writers, this is a bizarre story (factually based, according to Wikipedia) concerning the short career of Stuart Sutcliffe, an early member of The Beatles pop group, told from Sutcliffe’s viewpoint but in the second person.

From DF Lewis’s Gestalt Real-Time Reviews:

…A fine example of the ‘synchronised shards of random truth and fiction’. The Minotaur legend earlier transfigured, now the Faust Legend. The ultimate Icarus legend as a ‘dying fall’ in music, I feel. It leaves a good thought-provoking aftertaste, as we wonder which Beatle is still to reap the ‘tontine’.

From Lois Tilton’s review at Locus:

It’s hard to think that a story about Sutcliffe’s tragically short life could be very happy, but this comes pretty close. Still, there’s no real fantastic content here, or much real creation.

From Steve Rogerson’s review

This sent a shiver down my spine.

Tags: Reviews, Short stories, Who is this 'Shannon Faye' and why do people keep thinking she's me?
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Recent Works

Recent Posts

...is approximately 29.7 Earth years.

"A Year on Saturn" is the website of Shannon Fay,
freelance and fiction writer.