Two positive reviews of Jetsam - I've linked to the full articles, but below is the text that just deals with my story. They're not huge reviews, but that doesn't matter - I'm very happy that I was mentioned at all. FYI, I haven't been actively seeking these out - these both come to me via the editor of Sybil's Garage, Matt Kressel

A review in The Hudson Reporter by Diane Schwabele:
The disturbing yet powerful "Jetsam" by Livia Llewellyn recalls images of the devastated World Trade Center and the billowing smoke. The narrator Jay struggles to remember something crucial that was lost. "Only a week since the attack, and smoke still billowed in toxic sheets over the lower part of the island. Chemicals and flesh - the dead settled in their mouth[s] and lungs," Llewellyn writes.

and

A review in Farrago's Wainscot by Darin Bradley:
Livia Llewellyn's "Jetsam" is phantasmagoric, a great "what if" taking contemporary metaphors of self to their logical conclusions. In this story, which draws its force from alienation in commodified society, ruin has learned to eat, and the middenheaps of its kipple-filled gullet are the new reality.

"Kipple-filled gullet" - I want to use that for a story now. :D

Labels: reviews

I've posted the preface and first five chapters of my YA dark fantasy, RBD, as well as a sort of introductory post about this current version, and what I'm hoping the new version (which will be written later this year) to be about.

Start with this post right here, and it'll lead you to the preface and chapters. You don't need a Livejournal to see the posts - everyone's welcome to read and comment. Anonymous comments will be screened, of course.

Future chapters will be posted two at a time, every Monday morning, until everything that I wrote (all of "book one" and half of "book two") is up.

Labels: free fiction

In response to Howard V. Hendrix' rant of several days ago, Jo Walton has created the first ever International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, which will be held next Monday, April 23rd. This is a day for all writers to post professional-level work on their websites and blogs, thus refuting Dr. Hendrix's idea that those who post online are "scabs".

For my part, I've decided to throw caution to the wind - as well as my pride, and a very bad old draft - and post the remains of my trunked YA dark fantasy novel online at an old journal, the_numinous_1. I suppose it's cheating of a sort - a trunked anything usually means not a speck of professional level writing has been involved. However, posting it online will forever rid me and my "writer's ego" of the notion that it's some shining, undiscovered masterpiece - once I post it, everyone will be able to see it for the largely flawed piece of crap that a first novel usually is. No, there will be no agents or editors "discovering" me, there will be no sudden group of "fans" clamoring for more fiction from me. Most people who read my writing react with absolute silence: and silence is the diplomatic way of letting someone know that their writing is mediocre, or downright shitty. So I'm not posting it to get a shiny contract from a publisher, or lots of "OMG U R SEW GOOD" comments - I know that will never happen. I'm posting it to get rid of it, to wash my hands of it, to make it impossible for me to ever send it out to agents and editors again. Once it's on the net, it's dead - the silence will confirm it. And then, I can finally pick out those few good bits (maybe 2,000 words in a sea of 100,000) and start to write a good novel. Or, at the least, one that's marginally less mediocre.

I usually don't link to internet fist fights, but not linking to this one is like not telling y'all that there's free candy and ice cream being given away in the puppy & kitten store down the street. Besides, as someone who's contemplated posting free fiction on my website (and who once posted an entire novel on a f-locked Livejournal), this whole series of arguments is of great interest to me.

SFWA VP Howard V. Hendrix (that's DOCTOR Hendrix to you!) seriously loses his shit, insults most of SFWA's membership, misuses the term "scab".

Nick Mamatas rips him a new one, in the way that only he can do.

John Scalzi at first decides there's not much to comment on...

...but then changes his mind and rips Dr. McScaberson a new one, in the way that only he can do.

Update: Using Gresham's Law, Dr. Hendrix tries, fails to logically explain his use of the term "scab".

For the record: I love Hendrix's fiction, and will keep buying it as long as he keeps writing it. But I disagree with his argument that posting free fiction online prevents "legitimate" writers from earning a living. My little stories and novella excerpts are not stealing the bread from the mouths of writers and their families. The only person it might prevent getting paid for their work is... me, if publishers refuse to buy the work on the grounds that I already "published" it through internet posting. However, John Scalzi's success with his online novel "Agent to the Stars" (and writers who've posted even just a few chapters of WIPs online - such as Cherie Priest, the most famous example) disproves the theory that once online, it can never be sold - so you never know. But I'm not yet as popular or as talented as those writers, so for now, I'll keep online fiction limited to reprints and excerpts only.

Labels: writing gossip

I've been spending a lot of time reading up on and researching a variety of subjects for my sooper-sekrit project that's due early this summer. Many of them are very, very, very boring technical books and manuals. I've come to the stunning conclusion that about 99% of what I've read will be completely useless when it comes time to start writing. Unfortunately, that's kind of the way it goes with research. So, what will be the most useful? The email correspondence between myself and an individual who had first-hand experience with the setting of my project. So there you go.

However, I can't say wading through all that technical writing was wasted time. If I hadn't done it, I'd be worried that I should have done it, that there was some spectacular bit of information out there that I'd never know about because I was too damn lazy to do the work to find it (0r to find out that it doesn't exist, as the case may be). And, as I slogged my way through equations and charts and paragraphs full of blah-dee-blah-dee-blah, I realized that most of my original ideas were quite ridiculous, even by the generous standards of genre writing. This led me to some better ideas, which has started to lead me to different areas of research, and: the faint beginnings of some interesting characters and a plot! FINALLY.

I can hardly wait to start researching mining operations and steam engine technology for my steampunk novellas. Woo. Freakin'. Hoo.

Labels: research

Apologies to those of you who also read my livejournal, because this is pretty much the exact same post of earlier today. Sorry!

Sybil's Garage No. 4 is out and available for order. I have my contributor copy already, and I have to say that it's a beautiful magazine, inside and out. Also, if you click on the link and scroll down, at the bottom of the page you'll see that two stories from the magazine are also online for your viewing pleasure: "Seas of the World" by Ekaterina Sedia" and… "Jetsam". Yay!

Here's the full TOC:

Fiction
"After the War," by Leah Bobet
"On Death and the Deuce," by Richard Bowes
"Pairings," by John Bowker
"Means of Communication," by Barbara Krasnoff
"Jetsam," by Livia Llewellyn
"An Appetite for Love," by Cat Rambo
"Seas of the World," by Ekaterina Sedia
"Translucence," by Rowena Southard
"Strangeness," by Steve Rasnic Tem

Poetry
"Arrive on Time," by Bruce Boston
"If the Shoe Fits," by Aurelio Rico Lopez III
"Frayed Worlds," by David C. Kopaska-Merkel & Wendy Rathbone
"Farewell," by Jaime Lee Moyer
"One of the Reasons," by Kristine Ong Muslim
"The Answer Compounded," by J.C. Runolfson
"Disparate Parts," by Rachel Swirsky
"Flesh into Sand," by JoSelle Vanderhooft

Interviews
Jeffrey Ford interviewed by Matthew Kressel
Stephen Segal interviewed by Devin Poore

Labels: free fiction, publication