Recent Works

'The Most Okay of All Possible Worlds' in Daily Science Fiction, 06/09/19
.'Wayfarer' in Daily Science Fiction, 10/01/17
'House Hunting' in the anthology "Haunted House Short Stories" from Flame Tree Press, 3/26/19

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When Shannon was a small child she dreamed about a girl who crashed her rocket ship on an alien planet. She wrote her dream down as a class assignment and has been writing ever since. Learn more...

A Year on Saturn

...is approximately 29.7 Earth years.


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

Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

Book Clubs, Short Story Discussions, and Author talks for the week of April 20th-27th, 2020

This has not been the year anyone planned it to be. Nearly every annual event that writers look forward to have been cancelled or transmogrified. For some writers, this means missing out on a career milestone, like accepting a Hugo Award in person, or going to a workshop that’s no longer happening. There’s a great sense of loss as we miss out on these traditions, but at the same time people are stepping the fuck up and offering so much of their time, expertise and resources to each other. Everything sucks, but we’re not in this alone.

There are a lot of great things going on out there if you are a speculative fiction writer. So many great things that I don’t have the time or energy to recap them all, so in this post I wanted to focus on 1. Reading and discussion groups. One of the things that help writers grow is reading a shit ton and thinking about what goes into each story 2. Stuff happening this week 3. Things I am personally interested in.

That narrows it down to three events this week I want to highlight:

Monday, April 20th – Us in Flux: Conversations with Kij Johnson and Jessie Rack

Kij Johnson is amazing writer and a great teacher (I was lucky enough to have her as an instructor at Clarion West). If you haven’t read her short stories, google “Ponies”, “Mantis Wives”, and “Spar,” and get ready to be hollowed out. On Monday Kij and ecologist Jessie Rack will be discussing a new story of Kij’s that was published on Thursday. The event is free.

Tuesday, April 21st – Short Story Club: Live Q&A with Ted Chiang
The short story book club is less a discussion group and more of an author Q&A (at least, based on the previous event with Cory Doctorow) and I am A-okay with that. Ted Chiang is one of the most acclaimed shot-spec writers working right now, and I can’t wait to get a chance to listen to him talk. Tickets are free but can be purchased with the money going to Covid-19 relief charities.

Friday, April 24th- Vox’s Online Book Club Discuss the final part of “The City We Became”

Even during a shutdown, my local library is still coming through- just recently my hold on a digital copy of N.K. Jemisin’s newest novel “The City We Became” came through. I’m pumped to read it, in part so I can take part in all the book clubs that are discussing it.

New Stories Up at Daily Science Fiction

Since my last post here I’ve had two new stories published. First up is ‘Prodigal Daughter’, which came out on December 26th of last year. It’s about number stations and how one causes a rift between two sisters. You can read it here at Daily Science Fiction.

Also up at Daily Science Fiction is my story ‘Fight for the Stars.’ It’s a very different story from Prodigal Daughters as Prodigal Daughters is creepy and ambiguous, while Fight for the Stars is straight-up in your face space opera. It was published yesterday at Daily Science Fiction and can be found here.

In other news, I have been busy starting a new job and also working on my novel. The only real reason I’m writing this post is because today I’m going to go to the local animal shelter and hopefully find the cat of my dreams :3. I figured that as I waited to go I’d do something productive and update my website.

Science Fiction Every Day!

I’ve recently had not one but two stories published in Daily Science Fiction. One is a story I wrote just this summer. I sent it to one market (where it was rejected) before sending it to DSF, where it was accepted PDQ. The other story is something I wrote in the year two-thousand and thirteen, back when I was still finding my feet as a writer. That older story was rejected at least 13 times before I remembered that I had never sent it to DSF, the perfect market for it. And it was the perfect market for it: they bought it.

I won’t say which one is the old story and which one is the new. The point is that sometimes you will find success with a submission right away, other times it might take several years and submissions before it gets out into the wider world. But however they ended up in the world, I’m glad they are finally there.

To Give you the Night Sky published on December 22nd, 2016

Goes Both Ways, published (today!) on January 10th, 2017

I will have a few posts up soon about my submission stats for 2016, but if you can’t wait you can re-read my post about my 2015 submission stats, as I suspect my 2016 post will be quite similar stats-wise (though maybe a bit more hopeful tone wise).

NaNoWriMo Week Four: WINNER WINNER CHIICKEN DINNER

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Back ‘Singular Irregularity,’ a kickass time travel anthology

Pretty much what it says in the imperative mood above: back this kickstarter please! It has a great line up of authors, a funny editor with a vision, and a story by ME.

 

On Finshing Things

Last week I was in Frankfurt, Germany. I had time to kill and a Museumsurfer card, so because it was right next to the German film museum I visited the Museum Angerwandte Kunst, which wikipedia describes as a museum that ‘focusses[sic] on the perception of currents and developments in society with a special emphasis on design, fashion and the performative element.’ The main exhibit on was Stefan Sagmeister’s ‘Happiness.’ It was an interesting exhibit even if it had that empty, ‘don’t worry be happy’ vibe I associate with TedTalks (Sameister has in fact done several talks on his ten year exploration on what makes people happy. I actually do think there’s lots of good advice in there: I am a total proponent of keeping a diary. But the videos also have the edge of ‘And once you gain your superpowers that come with being a privileged person, you can use them to make your corporate culture stronger!’).

Annnnnyway, in one part of the exhibit you have to ride a stationary bike in order to power a set of neon lights that will reveal some pearl of wisdom. I got on a pedaled, going all out, but nothing happened. I was getting a little frustrated and feeling silly pedaling away while the other museum goers watched me. Finally I gave up and stopped pedaling.

And in that moment the sign lit up.

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Tomorrow’s Cthulhu, featuring my short story ‘Church of the Renewed Covenant’

Yes, there are a ton of Lovecraft anthologies out there, but Tomorrow Cthulhu has something that none of those other collections have: a story by me.’Church of the Renewed Covenant’ is about a couple who are church-shopping for a place where they can comfortably worship the elder gods (the story is inspired by a church pamphlet I found near my house).

Check it out on Amazon here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This actually came out back in January, but better late than never.

Clarion West Personal Essay

There is less than a month left to apply for this year’s Clarion West and Clarion USD (apply early and you will save some money. How early? How much money? Click the fudgin’ links). As part of the Clarion West application you are required to submit a personal essay as well as samples of your fiction. When I was putting together my application back in 2014, I found it really helpful reading the what other CW attendees had written and was grateful whenever I could find someone’s personal essay online. So, in the spirit of paying it forward, here’s my essay after the cut.

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First Quarter Resolutions

I love making New Year’s resolutions. Keeping them, however, is another story (ba-dum-tish!). Part of it is I don’t think year-long goals are always the way to go, that you’re setting yourself up to burn out if you try and uphold that same sense of hope and optimism you had on January 1st  all the way to June 28th. I like to think of them as more like quarter-year goals. That way it doesn’t seem like such a looming task and you can take stock of things at the three month mark.

(If at times it sounds like I’ve swallowed a self-help book, I blame my parents. No, not like that! My parents teach time management for a living and have taught me well).

Anyway, first quarter resolutions:

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Story Submission Stats 2015

Hey so it’s the end of the year. Maybe I should do some end of the year blog post. Or something.

I know! To the stats-mobile!

In 2015, I made 95 short story submissions

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