Short Story in The Future Fire

Why the weird clock? Thank you for asking. The clock, designed by Igor Barbashin and Daria Volokhova, tells time by reassembling its shattered numbers. I thought it a nice image to go with the title of my short sf story "The Boy Who Shattered Time," which will be out and online in the next issue of The Future Fire. The story is about a reluctant time traveller conscripted by a corrupt government to return to the past for the purpose of building the present. All those pyramids didn't get there by themselves, you know, the corrupt future government claims. Of course, it being a story, nothing is as it first seems.

I've been writing short fiction for about 25 years. The stuff I wrote from age 17 - 21 was destroyed in a fit of self-loathing. That great purge allowed me to romanticize my early fiction. It was earth-shatteringly great, you know. Too bad I can't show you. And so, I've spent the last twenty-some years trying to match the imagined glory of those early stories.

A couple of my recent stories -- all speculative fiction -- have been published under a pseudonym, which I will never reveal as it is also the password to every internet account I hold. "The Boy Who Shattered Time" will be the first story published under my legal name (Hieronymus Q Waglestein, if we've just met...nice to meet you), if you forget about some earlier forgettable stories that no one even remembers published in magazines that no longer exist.

So, watch The Future Fire for a story in the next while.

Fancy Clapping a best-seller?

Strange things. For a brief time this evening, the yet-to-be-published _Fancy Clapping_ (YSP) was listed as the # 5 best-selling poetry title on Amazon.ca, just below Leonard Cohen, a novel by Michael Crummey, and two novels by Michael Ondaatje. I'm not sure what it means, but it's interesting.

Fancy Clapping cover

Here is the front cover of Fancy Clapping, due in spring from Your Scrivener Press. The image was made by the great and good Gary Barwin. The cover itself was designed by Chris Evans for YSP. Advance orders are available at www.yourscrivenerpress.com

POEM

Have you ever written a poem

for yourself, for no one else

but yourself, and read the poem

to the sky on a clear night?

Just the stars and your poem,

you and the breeze in the dark,

over the legendary hum of cicadas.

What else? A memory

dog-tailing this memory.

Fancy Clapping update

The cover for Fancy Clapping should be available for early blog posting in a few weeks.

Right now, working on a new sequence of poems. Updates will follow.

 

 

New Book: Spring, 2012

I’ve just signed with Your Scrivener Press for the proposed spring publication of Fancy Clapping.

The collection, written from May 2010 to August 2010 and revised November 2010 and again May to July 2011, consists (as of now) of 42 poems, including two long poems, “Fancy Clapping” and “Found Missing.” The title poem, consisting of 32 couplets, is an experiment in rhythm. While “Found Missing,” made of 25 modified cinquain stanzas with roughly 15 syllables per line, is a look at myth, law, gender, sex, and hubris. The collection deals with mortality in, I hope, a humourous way. Can’t wait to see what it looks like.

In other news, I hope to have a collection of short stories together by next year, and two novels are on the go – one slowly, the other very slowly.

Ghost Music, Nominations, and the Blinding Echo/Ego

I suppose it might be considered bragging, if I thought anyone read this blog, to say that Ghost Music (BuschekBooks) has been longlisted for the fabulous ReLit Award. If you, who probably aren't reading this post, haven't heard, the ReLit is given out to three books -- one novel, one collection of poetry, one short story collection -- published by small Canadian presses. True to its motto (Ideas, Not Money), The Relit Awards awards the winners with a beautiful and coveted ring ("My Precious!") with four articulated alphabetic bands for spelling out four-letter words (or short sentences: "Iwin," for example). I've only seen the ring in pictures, and in my dreams, so I can't say for sure what it's like, but I can think of a whole lot of four letter words that need spelling.

I am honoured to have Ghost Music listed alongside all those great titles. That's reward enough, isn't it? "We wants it, we needs it" -- oh, cut that out!