Generally, if I’m silent on my blog, it’s because something major is going on in my life and I am distracted by it. This is so true. Whoever is writing my life right now needs an editor, because if I wrote what I’m experiencing (many things, all bunching up—kinda like deadlines), my own editor would tell me to dial it back and spread the excitement out.

Some of it has been personal, some of it legal, some of it professional, some of it medical. I’m not going to go into detail on any of it. At least, not yet. The excitement that’s good is wonderful. Seriously. The excitement that is not good is…well, my sister and I have a saying these days: “It’s not ideal, but it’s not terrible.” This has been our mantra for 2021.

Aside: You know, I used to think 2020 was a bad year. It wasn’t. It was the equivalent of being grounded on date night—seems like the end of the world when you are experiencing it but in retrospect, it wasn’t. 2021 is a bad year. It’s been the equivalent of having your shins kicked while you’re already down. I don’t like it.

Much of the personal excitement is already done and over with or was a false start to begin with. Some of it I am now going through. Especially the medical. Nothing mortal, but nothing fun. I may end up with scars—emotional and physical. When it is all said and done, I’ll talk about it. What it does mean now is that my attention span is short and my thoughts are distracted.

In the meantime, I’m working on my newest Shadowrun novel: Elfin Black, starring Elfin John (from “Dark Side Matters”) and a previous protagonist, Imre Dahl (From Makeda Red). A couple of characters from my YA novellas will also be making an appearance. All of this is making me very happy. It’s nice to be distracted by a handsome pair of fictional characters who will get along like a house on fire once they meet up. Of course, I’ve had an inkling of what my next Shadowrun YA novella will be about. Thus, it is threatening to eat my brain while I work on Elfin Black. Isn’t it always the way?

Lisa Morton is a friend of mine, a good editor, a better author, and an all-around spooky kind of gal. I love working with her. Today, she tells me why it took her 30 years to put together her first short story collection.

My first professional short fiction sale happened in 1994, when I sold a story called “Sane Reaction” to editors Stephen Jones and David Sutton for a British anthology called Dark Voices 6. Since then, I’ve sold more than 150 short stories, to magazines, anthologies, and online venues. My short work has won awards and a lot of nice reviews, it’s been frequently reprinted, and I’ve reached the point where I get a lot of invitations into new projects.

So why did I wait almost thirty years to put out my first real collection?

Well, first of all, there have been other collections. My first was a themed collection called Monsters of L.A., which put twenty classic monsters in the middle of the SoCal metrosprawl; but that collection included only original stories, and was not a “greatest hits” sort of book (it was also nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Collection).

I was honored when Cemetery Dance included me in their “Select” series, which were small books that collected just a few stories from each author; mine included four reprints.

In 2017, JournalStone put out a collection of my Halloween-themed stories (as a Halloween expert, I’ve written a considerable amount of both fiction and non-fiction about the holiday), The Samhanach and Other Halloween Experts. That one was a substantial collection of reprints that also included novellas.

But never a more general collection, until now. Why did I wait so long, especially when so many authors put out collections as soon as they have enough stories to create something that’s acceptably book-length?

There are a couple of reasons. First off, I think too many authors rush into collections too soon; I see new authors self-publishing collections all the time, and I wonder how they’ll get people to buy a book full of short stories by an author they may not know yet (collections and anthologies are both notoriously tough sells).

Second: as a kid growing up, I loved mass market paperback collections. When I had a few weeks’ worth of allowance saved up, my mom would drive me to the local used bookstore, I’d peruse the science fiction and horror sections, and come home with stacks of paperback collections by authors like Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard. I probably learned the art of short story writing from absorbing those collections, so of course I always dreamed of having one of my own. Unfortunately, the mass market paperback story collection is largely a thing of the past now, kept only for the major bestselling authors and not the midlist masters and mistresses.

I still wanted a traditionally published book, although I’ve self-published some mini-collections, mainly as giveaways to my newsletter subscribers. I talked to a few publishers over the years, some expressed interest, but nothing ever came of it.

Cue Kate Jonez. Kate is the owner of a wonderful small press called Omnium Gatherum. A few years ago, while we were working together on assembling StokerCon™ 2017, Kate mentioned to me that she’d love to publish my collection.

And that’s how I landed here, with my first major retrospective collection, Night Terrors & Other Tales, being published by Omnium Gatherum. The collection includes twenty reprint stories, chosen by me, and one new piece written for the collection (“Night Terrors”). Kate did a wonderful job with the book, hiring my friend Greg Chapman to create the creepy cover art, and I couldn’t be prouder to have this big slice of me finally coming out into the world.

To quote the Grateful Dead…what a long strange trip it’s been.

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Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, the author of four novels and over 150 short stories, and a world-class Halloween expert. Her recent releases include Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction from Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923 (co-edited with Leslie S. Klinger) and Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances; her latest short stories appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, Speculative Los Angeles, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles. Forthcoming in 2021 is the collection Night Terrors & Other Tales. Lisa lives in Los Angeles and online at www.lisamorton.com .

Happy Goblinization Day! In the Shadowrun Universe, (from the Shadowrun wiki) “Goblinization began on 30 April 2021. On this day many humans (approximately 10% of the world's population), without any evident reason, transformed into Orks and Trolls. In most cases, those humans started changing en masse before the very eyes of horrified spectators, causing much panic and alarm. This event made the population fearful and discriminatory, much more than UGE, meeting metahumanity with hostility and sometimes force.

Riots as a result of Goblinization escalated, especially after the 14th amendment of the UCAS constitution gave the same rights to metahumans, culminated into the Night of Rage in 2039. It has had a negative influence on Japan's metahuman policy, and goblinization is indirectly responsible for the formation of the Humanis Policlub. This event caused the Coffee Famine of 2022.”

Happily, I get to announce that I have signed a contract for my next Shadowrun novel, Elfin Black, staring the main character, Elfin John, from the short story “Dark Side Matters” that was in the Drawing Destiny anthology. I’m super excited for this novel. It’s set on the outskirts of Seattle in the wilds of Snohomish—a place I am familiar with because of playing Ingress.

Elfin Black will draw in a couple of characters from Shadowrun: Makeda Red and Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. I think, eventually, all of the characters from all of my Shadowrun novels and novellas will be linked. I have a plan. It is a very cunning plan…

Shadowrun: Makeda Red. It was supposed be a simple extraction from the Brussels2Rome party train. With an eclectic crowd, a willing target, and a lot of nuyen at stake, what could go wrong? Everything—as Makeda Red discovers the hard way. There’s more than one target on the train, and more than one shadowrunner team in play. When someone sabotages the tracks in the middle of the Swiss Alps, she’s forced to extract her client much earlier than planned. (Also available in audiobook format.)

Shadowrun: DocWagon19. DocWagon—saviors of the needy, rescuers of the desperate. Reporter Amelia Hart has embedded herself with a DocWagon team to see what their life is really like. When the past comes to haunt the team, Amelia is in for a wild ride. (Novella, also available in audiobook format.)

Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. When Sartorial meets Kintsugi at a jabber—an illegal warehouse party—they fall in love as only teenagers can do. But the world conspires to keep them apart…as do the secrets the teenagers hold. (Novella)

Shadowrun: See How She Runs. Ridley Ruiz is an ambitious teenager from a poor family, but she’s got dreams of a bigger, better life. One night at a jabber changes everything. Ridley sees something she wasn’t supposed to see, and is given a package she isn’t supposed to have. After she makes the delivery to a dangerous person and receives a handsome reward, chance conspires against her, and this one-time event becomes a deal with the devil.

• Anthologies: I am editing my 21st anthology with the incredibly talented Cat Rambo. We’ve just finalized the TOC.  (I know this one is a bit old but life is complicated.)

• Anthologies: Speaking of anthologies, The Reinvented Heart has a cover and it is beautiful! The artist is Christina P. Myrvold. I love it.

• Review of me: A very nice review of an old story of mine in WESTWARD WEIRD from DAW.

• Podcast: Interview with Writers Drinking Coffee. This was so much fun!

• Thoughts: We Hate You Now. Especially since I didn’t get to visit my mother last year. Now I won’t get to visit her ever again.

• Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.

I’ve been home from NC for a couple of days and I can feel a screaming hissy fit of grief just waiting in the wings for its time to come. Grief is hard. Grief is malleable. This grief is different from the grief I felt with my father. I got to say good-bye to Dad over Memorial Day weekend 2019 and though he didn’t die until Aug 19, 2019, I mourned my loss that whole time.

Mom’s death was different. Yes, there were signs that she’d been slowing down since the beginning of the year—too tired to talk for long and arthritis preventing her from typing. But she had fifteen days from the time she told my sister she was in pain to the time of her death. In that fifteen days, she spent seven of them in the hospital, six of them at home, and then a final two days (really more like one-and-a-half) in the hospital. Hospice got mentioned, but before the morning came, Mom was gone.

As much as I miss my Mom, I am thankful she spent much less time in pain than my father did and she passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Now, we are left with Mom’s estate and all the responsibilities therein. All I can say is that I’m so grateful that my parents sat all the kids (no spouses) down at a reunion about ten years ago and told us what their end of life plans were. What they wanted, who the executor was, what they didn’t want, which funeral home they’d already bought a plan with for a cremation and ashes scattered. They had everything set up and laid out. Neither of them was sick or even hurting at the time, but both were in their mid-60s and had the lay of the land. And I am so thankful. There was no fighting amongst the siblings. All of us knew what was what because of this past conversation. It made one thing (in an ocean of things) easier.

But I’ve got to tell you, going through Mom’s house and trying to decide what to take and what to auction off was an emotional roller-coaster. How could saying “No” to something feel like a betrayal while at the same time, saying “Yes” to something else felt like stealing from my mother? And yet, both were true.

We made the family decision that family pictures not chosen by any of the family members were going to be destroyed. We did not want our personal memories turned into stock photos and idle curiosities for the future. That meant we had to take all the photos out of the frames in anticipation of the estate auctioneers who would be coming by the next week. What we were left with was the perfect metaphor for the holes in our lives now that both parents were gone. Yes, someday those holes will become windows to our memories but for now…they hurt.

There is so much left to do and most of it falls on my sister’s shoulders. She’s the executor and she lives in the area. The estate lawyer is good and kind (and was very surprised at my parents’ foresight and forethought, taking care of their own funeral plans), but it is all still very complicated. Even though my sister and I spent a concentrated 2.5 weeks back in November 2019 decluttering the house and then she spent much of 2020 continuing to help improve/paint/redecorate the house.

The most poignant for me was the guest room the Husband and I stayed in, She created that for me and my brother and our spouses. It was beautiful. I’m still so sad I wasn’t able to stay there while she was still alive.

I’m going to end this now because I’ve lost the thread of my thoughts just looking at that picture. That happens so often these days. Grief overwhelms and I lose myself to it. 

A year ago today, I arrived home from the 2020 Rainforest Writers Retreat to discover that I had missed most of the texts the Husband had sent me about the sudden change in our immediate world. One of the benefits to the Rainforest Writers Retreat is it’s almost total lack of internet connection. It’s a wonderful writing retreat on the shores of Lake Quinault. Last year, there was even less internet than normal and my only warning that my world was about to change was a confusing message from the Husband that he needed to clean out his office frig.

Little did I know that that was the last writing related thing I was going to be able to do in the flesh until…well, who knows. By the time I got home, the Husband had been sent to “work from home until March 25th.” (They were so optimistic back then.) It’s been a year and every convention I am scheduled to be part of this year is already virtual (again) or is in the process of making that decision.

In the last year, I have not left the house except to grocery shop (ave of 2x/month), to see the two friends in my bubble (again, average of 2x/month), and once, in October, a socially distanced, quarantined trip to Lake Quinault for the Husband’s birthday where we brought all our food and stayed in a cabin in the woods. No eating out—then or this year. We have done our best to help local restaurants stay in business by ordering takeout and 90% of those, the Husband picked up. If I was there, I didn’t leave the car.

Sometimes we drive around just to see something new. We never leave the car. It’s not safe.

I own so many masks and so much sanitizer. I’ve been good about social distancing and masks. I’ve done everything we (all) were supposed to do. And even I wasn’t as strict as some of my immunocompromised friends. Some of them haven’t left their house at all, have had all their stuff delivered. And when people grumble about going “back” into lockdown quarantine, I realize that my version of lockdown quarantine has been VERY different than that of other people.

Birthday parties. Holiday parties. Football parties. Vacations to busy beaches or crowded attractions.

All the things I didn’t do because I complied. I would be irritated if it weren’t for the death of my Mom. Now, I’m angry. So very angry. It’s something I will never forget or forgive. I have lost faith in a lot of people.

One year gone and I have so much to mourn. Just like so many other people who lost friends, family, and co-workers to the pandemic. There are so many things I miss. Conventions, coffee shops, browsing at stores, walking by the lake without being concerned how close people are and whether or not they are wearing their masks properly (over your damn nose!).

Soon, I’m going to take a flight to bury my Mom and help my sister with as much as I can while I am there. She needs me and I need to be there. The Husband mentioned today that we both needed to be prepared to have to rush to a strange hospital, in another state, to get covid tests and if they come up positive for either of us, to remain in quarantine in my Mom’s house.

The thought upsets me. I was prepared to do a very hard lockdown for 14 days once we got home. We even packed the freezer full of food. I wasn’t prepared for that while traveling. Now I have to be. It’ll make packing a little more difficult. I was going to pack very light. Now, I have to consider what I will need to pack if I’m gone longer than expected. I’m still a freelancer and I have a job (or three) to do.

The only thing that I really am grateful for in this last year is my new appreciation of this house. The house is big enough that both the Husband and I have our own offices away from each other. Nothing is broken. Nothing is leaking. I have a lovely backyard. I have room. It’s more than many people have and I’m aware how lucky I am. We will never look at buying another house without considering what it would be like to live in lockdown within it.

One year gone. I hope to heaven that it’s not going to be two. If all goes well in my State, I will be eligible for the first round of vaccines in mid-April. I can’t wait.

Mom died yesterday. Born: 3 Mar 1946. Died: 28 Feb 2021. She was almost 75 years old. She died from chronic and acute respiratory failure complicated by pneumonia and septic shock. It was a very quick decline. She was admitted to the hospital on Feb 13, stayed there for seven days, was home for six days where things continued to decline, and was admitted to the hospital on the 27th. She died in her sleep with my sister at her side on the 28th. It was as peaceful as it could be. Her heart slowed then stopped.

I am grateful my sister was there and was able to keep me and my brother informed. Grateful she was able to pass on our desperate “Tell Mom I love her”s. Grateful for the message back: “Mom said to say she loves you both as well.”

In truth, Mom has been declining since the new year. Hindsight is 20/20. She was more tired. Her arthritis prevented her from typing as much. Her calls were short and her DMs and emails shorter.  It’s just over 18 months since Dad died. Over and over, Mom said the second year after Dad’s death was not as painful, but it was harder. My sister and I believe it’s because she was less numb.

I’m sitting here with a mess of emotions. Gratitude wars with rage and which is winning depends on the wind and a blink of an eye. The ping-pong of grief is about the size of a beach ball.

I’m so grateful that I got to have a good last trip in Nov 2019. We spent a couple of weeks bonding and getting to know each other once more. But she wanted to see me and the Husband again in 2020, because she didn’t know the Husband as well as she’d like to. She even set up the backroom specifically so it would be comfortable for couples....

But I didn’t go because I was being good and staying home like I was supposed to during the pandemic…

And I’m so angry that all the while there were people still going on fucking vacation to Hawaii or Las Vegas or whatever. Still spreading CoVid. I didn’t get to have that one last good trip when my Mom wasn’t grieving so much at the loss of Dad. And now the Husband is grieving because he liked my Mom, but couldn’t make it out in 2019 and now he will never have that chance.

But I’m grateful Mom had a fast decline rather than suffering. Grateful for her and Shannon. Grateful it was painless and she died in her sleep with gentle dignity and great faith.

Lather, rinse, repeat. So much anger. So much more gratitude.

Now I will fly across the country, wearing a KN95 the whole way (like I wouldn’t do before) to bury my mother. I will spend time with my sister and do whatever I can to help her because she needs me. And I will continue to be both grateful and angry, and no, there is nothing anyone can do to help me.

2020 was a bastard of a year. I just didn’t realize how much until this week. These scars are going to last a long, long time.

Marsheila Rockwell and I share a TOC for the forthcoming Turning the Tied anthology that will benefit the World Literacy Foundation. Today, she tells me her thoughts on how Ozma connects her the Ojibwe.

The story I have in IAMTW’s upcoming Turning the Tied anthology is called “A Prisoner Freed in Oz” and features Ozma of Oz. For those not familiar with her story (as detailed in L. Frank Baum’s The Marvelous Land of Oz), Ozma was born a girl, but as a baby was magically transformed into a boy named Tip, and lived as a boy until her teens, when she was finally transformed back into her true self. Modern readers will no doubt see a parallel to the transgender experience, although the book was first published in 1904, before that word was coined and well before it was an acceptable experience to write about in a children’s book.

Many people mistakenly believe that gender variance is a new idea, perhaps born out of the Sexual Revolutions of the 1920s or 1960s. But the character of Ozma hints that gender variance has existed for much longer than that, though perhaps not as openly expressed as it is today.

I am a reconnecting Chippewa (Ojibwe)/Métis (I’m not changing the subject, I promise). Broadly, ‘reconnecting’ in this context refers to an Indigenous person who was denied access to their tribe’s culture and heritage while growing up and is trying to rectify that situation as an adult, without the benefit of parents or grandparents to bridge the gap. Part of that effort (at least for me) includes trying to educate myself about and become active in Indigenous causes. It was during that process that I learned that many Indigenous tribes/nations recognized and accepted the concept of gender variance long before colonizers ever set foot on Turtle Island.

Specific beliefs and terminology varied from tribe to tribe—for instance, the Navajo called such people nadleeh and the Lakota used the term winkte. Gender variants included feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, masculine man, and sometimes both, or neither. Roles for such individuals varied depending on their tribe/nation, as well. Being Chippewa, I’ll focus on those beliefs.

According to Anton Treuer (Ojibwe), professor of Ojibwe linguistics at Bemidji State University, “the Ojibwe accepted variation. Men who chose to function as women were called ikwekanaazo, meaning ‘one who endeavors to be like a woman.’ Women who functioned as men were called ininiikaazo, meaning, ‘one who endeavors to be like a man.’” He goes on to say that the part played by these individuals, “was considered to be sacred, often because they assumed their roles based on spiritual dreams or visions.”

Today, ‘Two-Spirit’ is used as an umbrella term to try to capture the Indigenous gender variant experience. The word was coined in 1990 to replace the anthropological term berdache, which had traditionally been used to identify gender-variant Indigenous individuals. The etymology of that word, however, stems from the French bardache, which can be taken to mean “male prostitute,” and is patently offensive. While no experience is universal to all Indigenous people, and one word cannot possibly be used to frame an experience which differs across 574 federally recognized tribes, ‘Two-Spirit’ has, as its Wikipedia article notes, “generally received more acceptance and use than the term it replaced.”

So, long story short (ha!): Gender variance has been part of humanity for probably as long as there have been humans. Sadly, Ozma and the Ojibwe notwithstanding, acceptance of gender variance has been around for a much shorter time. But I look forward to the day when acceptance of all our differences will be the norm. Maybe my story will help with that. I hope so.

#TurningTheTied

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Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell is the author of twelve SF/F/H books, dozens of poems and short stories, several articles on writing and the writing process, and a handful of comic book scripts. She is also a disabled pediatric cancer and mental health awareness advocate and a reconnecting Chippewa/Métis. She lives in the Valley of the Sun with her husband, three of their five children, two rescue kitties (one from hell), and far too many books.

January was a month and a half. It felt a lot like the 13th month of 2020. Now that we’re into February, it’s starting to feel like 2021. Which is to say, time is moving again. Things are happening. While some of it is painful, all of it appears to be good.

Most of January was focused on slush reading and editing of 99 Tiny Terrors. Also on reading everything for The Reinvented Heart which I’m editing with Cat Rambo. On top of that, my house has been under construction.

We’ve had a gas fireplace that hasn’t really worked in two years. Since we did no travel last year, that money got earmarked for a new fireplace with updated tile and mantle. That was so (like the bathrooms) we can enjoy the home improvements before we (someday, projected to be 2025) sell this house since we know the things we’ve fixed/are fixing/will fix are things that need to be done to get the house sellable.

A simple renovation.

Nope. Cue: dry rot. Now, the Husband suspected some dry rot where the tile had been broken. He did not suspect half of the chimney had dry rot from blocked gutters that had been improperly replaced after the house was painted and thus tilted towards the chimney. So… I had holes in my house for days. It was most disturbing.

Things are better now. Not done. The week long reno has turned into two weeks, but the designer we hired has been awesome. He looked at the problem, worked on it, and had a solution and a plan within hours. We chose the right guy.

I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to having the house back. All of the dining room furniture is in the library nook or down in the family room. We’ve had to lock up the cats this whole time while the workers have been here—they are NOT pleased and have let us know this. Also, we’ve had to wear masks inside the house for everyone’s safety. None of this is fun, but we can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

In the meantime, one of the shelves in the family room holding some game books and all my graphic novels gave up the ghost and collapsed. We can put the blame squarely on The Dark Tower omnibus set and all of the Sandman graphic novels I have. That was added excitement we did not need. New, stronger wall brackets are on the way and I need to declutter some of those books. Still, lemonade out of lemons: it amuses me that Stephen King and Neil Gaiman murdered my shelf bracket.

Looking forward, I’ll be shifting from mere editing to actual anthology construction. It’s one of my favorite parts of the process; seeing a project become more than the sum of its parts. Also, I have some cool news to share on the publishing front when the contracts are signed. Plus, there’s potential awesomeness on the horizon.

I have a lot to look forward to in the next couple of months.

While I am aware that 2021 will not become magically “back to normal” (whatever the new normal is), I have hope that it will be better; that I will be able to visit friends and family. Hell, that I will make it to at least one convention in person. I’m enough of a realist to know that none of that might happen, but optimistic enough to believe some of it will.

In the meantime, I have projects scheduled for 2021. Here’s what’s known and forthcoming.

Editing:

• Full edit of the 99 Tiny Terrors anthology.
  
• Full edit of The Reinvented Heart anthology (with Cat Rambo).
• Editorial novel edits for BattleTech: Crimson Night.
• Editorial novella edits for Shadowrun: See How She Runs.
• Alpha edits for original near future SF novella (this one has been waiting for a year).
• Proof audiobook for release.
• Freelance ebook proofing.

Writing:

• After the contract is done, new Shadowrun novel.
  
• One contracted short story.
• Figure out the next original novel I’m going to write.

Most of the editing is scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. Most of the writing will be in the second and third quarters of the year. I think. This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t gone into it with a novel contract and a due date. I’m okay with this because of the two anthologies.

I guess, the short version is: I don’t really know everything I’m going to do in 2021. There are too many unknowns and “secret” possible projects in the air. And who knows about conventions. The ones I’m already going to for sure are all virtual.

I think I’m going to stick with this. This seems like a good plan to start with. Maybe I’ll update it in the second quarter of 2021.