I'm in print again. This time it's a very short story, Mother Knows Best, in Stone Skin Press' The Lion & the Aardvark. Here's the inside showing a wonderful illustration by Rachel Kahn.
GBS
Steve Dempsey - Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Submissions
I submitted a couple of stories to a short story collection this evening. My track record is fairly good in this regard, in that I've had two stories accepted out of about eight submissions.
Rejection is not something I particularly worry about. I'm unlikely to have to make a living from writing which is fortunate given the relatively low volume of my output, regardless of the quality of the writing. That said, publication is encouraging and something of a justification for continuing to write.
I think if I tried harder at submissions I would have more stories in print so perhaps I should put more effort into this end of the business. However, I'm not sure that would make me happier with the quality of my writing so for the more moment I'm going to focus on writing more and better.
Rejection is not something I particularly worry about. I'm unlikely to have to make a living from writing which is fortunate given the relatively low volume of my output, regardless of the quality of the writing. That said, publication is encouraging and something of a justification for continuing to write.
I think if I tried harder at submissions I would have more stories in print so perhaps I should put more effort into this end of the business. However, I'm not sure that would make me happier with the quality of my writing so for the more moment I'm going to focus on writing more and better.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Quietly Efficient
One of my earliest stories, and another one about animals. This time round it's wasps.
It is really good though. It doesn't make cuttings. It squeezes all the moisture out of the grass which is puts back in the garden and produces these bricks of rough paperlike material which go in the recycling bin or somewhere. And it's really quiet. Even when mowing the lawn it hardly makes a noise.
You have to understand that the new machines like the SupaPlant™ aren't just electronic. No, they have a tiny piece of brain matter that helps them make difficult decisions like whether a pretty white flower that it has found in a bed is too nice to be a weed. So once every month or so we have to feed it this brain food gloop.
“I don't care if it's hungry. It can't eat the fence. Where's the remote?” I asked.
“I think it's in the shed”, she said and went back to whatever she'd been doing.
I nipped over to the shed and pulled the door open. A few bees flew out. It seems that they'd been keeping out of the sun by building themselves a nest in the roof. They weren't the only ones who'd been busy. Across the back, where the shelves used to be, was a thing I'd never seen before. Like a 4' tall wine rack, but for tiny bottles, entirely made out of rough paper. I peered at it with a shudder. In each little hole, there was a tiny piece of twisted wire, a bit like some kind of insect pupa, each with a small cavity where a brain would go.
Quietly
efficient
by Steve Dempsey
It was a
hot afternoon in June. Even the bees were lazily going about their
business. I was stretched out on a lounger on the patio, a drink
slowly warming next to me in the sun and my book forgotten on the
floor. The SupaPlant™ was
quietly and efficiently tending the garden.
It had
taken some getting used to at first. There are machines that look
like machines, car welding robots and the like. They're OK. And
they're are those, only still in science fiction, like C3-PO that act
just like people, they're OK too. But somewhere in between is Uncanny
Valley where there those that are not quite machines and not quite
people and are really disturbing. SupaPlant™
was a bit like this. Most of the time it looked like a shiny white
lawnmower, and was quite safe. But if need be, it could unfurl these
arms from somewhere, stand up to prune trees, peer in at blemishes to
diagnose disease.
Creepiest
of all, when it was running low on power, it would send a text to the
phone asking for the back door to be opened. The first time this
happened, I was watching some sport on TV and I wandered out back to
find it crouched outside. When I opened the door it blossomed into
almost a person, like some Japanese cartoon, with glistening legs,
arms and a short stubby head. As I stood back in surprise, it strode
past me into the house, plugged into the nearest socket and recharged
itself. My wife came in to find me sitting there watching it with a
look of disgust on my face. She laughed.
“Yeah, I did that the
first time too,” she said.
It is really good though. It doesn't make cuttings. It squeezes all the moisture out of the grass which is puts back in the garden and produces these bricks of rough paperlike material which go in the recycling bin or somewhere. And it's really quiet. Even when mowing the lawn it hardly makes a noise.
So
when this crunching noise came from the back of the garden, I was
quiet startled. I sat up and there it was, it's long arms reaching up
from the ground, pulling pieces of wood from the back fence. The
strangest thing was that this was no panicky madness. Each tug at the
back fence was exactly calculated to tear off a piece of wood just
large enough to feed in it's mouth. It was even more menacing than
had it run amok.
I
shouted down the garden at it, “Er, stop. SupaPlant™ stop!” But
it didn't. It just carried on eating the fence. I ran to the house
and shouted to my wife, “SupaPlant™'s gone all weird. Where's the
remote control?” A
few moments later she opened a window upstairs and looked out.
“That
is weird,” she said, “I wonder if it's getting it's nutrients”.
You have to understand that the new machines like the SupaPlant™ aren't just electronic. No, they have a tiny piece of brain matter that helps them make difficult decisions like whether a pretty white flower that it has found in a bed is too nice to be a weed. So once every month or so we have to feed it this brain food gloop.
“I don't care if it's hungry. It can't eat the fence. Where's the remote?” I asked.
“I think it's in the shed”, she said and went back to whatever she'd been doing.
I nipped over to the shed and pulled the door open. A few bees flew out. It seems that they'd been keeping out of the sun by building themselves a nest in the roof. They weren't the only ones who'd been busy. Across the back, where the shelves used to be, was a thing I'd never seen before. Like a 4' tall wine rack, but for tiny bottles, entirely made out of rough paper. I peered at it with a shudder. In each little hole, there was a tiny piece of twisted wire, a bit like some kind of insect pupa, each with a small cavity where a brain would go.
The
remote! It was lying on the floor. As I bent over to pick it up I saw
SupaPlant™ standing behind me. Where was the damn off switch?
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Monkey
And here's another from our creative writing chap books. This time it was called London Forgotten.
Monkey by Steve Dempsey
Monkey by Steve Dempsey
Tim in Putney, back
against his front door, picked through his keys. He was drunk and so
it took him several minutes of fumbling around in the low orange
glare of the street light to select the correct one and get into his
basement flat. He staggered along the corridor and collapsed through
onto the sofa in the living room. Some time later he started. There
was a strange earthy bitter smell in the room, like leaves or
cabbage. Tim leaned over and switched on the light. It was the latest
in Swedish design, like a small umbrella hanging from the ceiling.
His mother had given it him but Tim found it annoying.
On the glass table
between Tim and the TV, and about the size of a newborn child, was a
small monkey. It was sitting hunched over with its knees drawn up. In
the indirect light of the lamp, the monkey's beige fur looked almost
green and the tufts of white around its black face made its features
look even smaller. Its long tail was stretched out across the table
and the black tip kept flicking up angrily.
'Shoo,' said Tim,
'Bugger off.' The monkey rolled back on its haunches and stared at
him. Its tail swept round into its shadow. It sat there, silently not
quite looking at Tim. Tim pressed himself back into the sofa, levered
himself up with great effort and scrambled back towards the door. The
monkey lifted up its feet and spun round on its bottom on the smooth
surface of the table. Feet still up, it bared its teeth, no grinned,
at him.
And Tim remembered.
He was only twelve. The
school was on a trip to London. Instead of the more fancied, and
expensive, Zoo in Regent's Park, they had gone to the small one in
Battersea. They had sat round the Peace Pagoda whilst they ate their
sandwiches and crisps, throwing conkers at each other and kicking the
Autumn leaves into noisy brown clouds. Finally the teachers had
ushered them into the zoo. It had cows and sheep. What kind of a zoo
had cows? There were cows in the fields all round his provincial home
town. This wasn't a proper zoo!
Eventually they found
some monkeys. “Green Monkey” the card under the window had said
but they hadn't been green at all. Tim pressed his nose against the
pane and shouted.
'Oi monkey, want some
of this?' He held up a small plastic cup of lime squash, the sort
with a foil lid. Now this was proper green, luminous almost. Suddenly
the monkey was interested. It dashed over to Tim and pressed the
underside of its body against the window. Tim jumped back and his
friends laughed at him.
'I show you, bloody
monkey. I'll show you green.' Tim held the carton by the window and
moved slowly towards the part of the enclosure that was covered in a
metal cage. He teased the monkey a few times, hiding the drink under
his coat and waiting for it to lose interest before whipping it out
again. Finally the monkey could take it no more and started
screaming. Tim pulled back the lid of the cup and threw the entire
contents over the little creature.
'Now you're green!' he
shouted and jumped back. The monkey retreated to a perch and started
licking itself but the rest of the troop smelled the sickly sweet
drink and came over to investigate. The poor little monkey was
deluged by the others, all licking, scratching and biting. When the
keeper finally came to see what the fuss was, the monkey had taken
quite a beating. When asked what had happened Tim gave the
non-committal teenage grunt and shrug and wandered off.
Back in Putney, Tim
snapped out of his reverie as he felt a small furry hand coming out
of his pocket. The damn monkey had his iPhone. It hopped back on to
the table and grinned with excitement holding the phone up in one
hand. Tim lunged for it but it flexed its legs and leapt away, up
Tim's arm, off his head and onto the light-fitting. It hung there,
holding itself almost horizontal with legs and tail, whilst it
clutched the iPhone in its paws and chewed at it.
Tim jumped but the
monkey just hoisted the phone out of his reach. It had managed to get
the back off and the battery dropped to the floor. Tim raced to the
kitchen in search of a broom. There was a terrific crash from the
front room. He ran back to find the broken lamp in the midst of the
shattered table, tiny pieces of glass twinkly in the light from the
hallway. With the end of the broom, he manoeuvred the mess out of the
way to find the crumpled remains of his phone, the screen cracked,
wires poking out of the back and the SIM card bitten in half. Of the
monkey, there was no sign.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
How writing works
In my short experience of small press in the UK (and I ignorantly expect the big boys to operate in a similar way, although possibly less so now than in the past), how it works is that authors, publishers and allied trades meet in pubs, introduce friends to publishers, swap business cards and drink. This requires three things:
1. A business card - I should really get one of these.
2. The ability to drink. I managed two half pints today (twice what I usually drink in a month). The swapping of beer for stories is no doubt an old ritual but it still holds good today in England. I'll have to nurse mine for much longer.
3. Friends*. I do have friends. I know gamers on four continents but I'm very new to writing. So I have to make friends and that's much harder. At the Pornokitsch event tonight I knew one person. We had a chat, but I couldn't monopolise his time, even if he wasn't running the show. When it comes to the English, foreigners imagine us as the shy, retiring type. I am not one to disabuse them of that notion. In fact, if I'm their only experience of the English, as was the case in France, they were probably quite surprised when they met my outgoing (well, for English anway) compatriots. So I had to talk to people I didn't know. Preferable without sticking to them like a lost child for the evening. I think I did quite well. I talked to at least seven other people in the two hours I was there and even got someone else's business card. Of course, I have to write a lot more, but I've made a little progress on the social side so I'm happy.
The other thing is cliques. I'm aware of cliques within gaming. As a dilettante gaming writer, I'm not important enough that it matters. And anyway, my stuff is good enough that if I could find the time to write more gaming material, I could probably get it published. In the writing world it's different. I don't know who's who or whether the person I'm talking to is a pariah. Become his or her friend and no one will speak to you at parties, or publish your story.
This probably makes it sound an awful place of back-biting and oneuppersonship and it wasn't. I had a very nice time, talked to some lovely people, had a drink, bought a book. It's just interesting to look at all the other things that were going on at the same time.
*Four of my gaming friends were mentioned tonight, and not by me. So the crossover is there.
1. A business card - I should really get one of these.
2. The ability to drink. I managed two half pints today (twice what I usually drink in a month). The swapping of beer for stories is no doubt an old ritual but it still holds good today in England. I'll have to nurse mine for much longer.
3. Friends*. I do have friends. I know gamers on four continents but I'm very new to writing. So I have to make friends and that's much harder. At the Pornokitsch event tonight I knew one person. We had a chat, but I couldn't monopolise his time, even if he wasn't running the show. When it comes to the English, foreigners imagine us as the shy, retiring type. I am not one to disabuse them of that notion. In fact, if I'm their only experience of the English, as was the case in France, they were probably quite surprised when they met my outgoing (well, for English anway) compatriots. So I had to talk to people I didn't know. Preferable without sticking to them like a lost child for the evening. I think I did quite well. I talked to at least seven other people in the two hours I was there and even got someone else's business card. Of course, I have to write a lot more, but I've made a little progress on the social side so I'm happy.
The other thing is cliques. I'm aware of cliques within gaming. As a dilettante gaming writer, I'm not important enough that it matters. And anyway, my stuff is good enough that if I could find the time to write more gaming material, I could probably get it published. In the writing world it's different. I don't know who's who or whether the person I'm talking to is a pariah. Become his or her friend and no one will speak to you at parties, or publish your story.
This probably makes it sound an awful place of back-biting and oneuppersonship and it wasn't. I had a very nice time, talked to some lovely people, had a drink, bought a book. It's just interesting to look at all the other things that were going on at the same time.
*Four of my gaming friends were mentioned tonight, and not by me. So the crossover is there.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Snail
Here's another old story that was in London Monsters, a zine put out by our creative writing group.
Snail by Steve Dempsey
Snail by Steve Dempsey
We hadn't
been long in Chalice Road in Putney when our neighbours, the
Sandersons, invited us over to 'meet the gang'. No doubt our
credentials would be checked. Perhaps a sly, 'Did you read Polly
Toynbee yesterday?' or the more direct 'Do you recycle?' headed over
armed with a bottle of Fairtrade Chilean Gewürztraminer and a
Tupperware box of home-made gluten-free brownies.
'That
should cover all the bases,' said Tony.
We were
met at the door by a man and a small boy who was naked from the waist
down.
'I don't
eat cows,' he said, enunciating each word careful, and hid behind his
father.
'Hi. I'm
Chris and this is Oscar,' said the man, obviously father to Oscar.
'Say hello Oscar.' But Oscar just hid his face and ran back into the
house. We introduced ourselves and Chris lead us through into the
hall and out towards the kitchen. I was just giving him our gifts
when Tony interrupted.
'Good
god! What is that, that thing.' He pointed past my ear and out into
the garden. I looked up. Beyond the decking, stretching from one side
of the lawn to the other, and a clear thirty feet high was an
undulating green wall of flesh, dripping with clear ooze and pierced
with a loose lipped maw. It reared up over the flower beds,
trampoline, outdoor furniture from Ikea and children.
'Oh,
don't mind that,' said Chris, 'It's just the snail.'
We took
sometime to calm down. We would have left there and then but manners, you know. The snail, Chris referred to it as 'he' although each time he
did, Oscar would solemnly correct him, 'they are hermaphrodites,
Dad', the snail had just appeared one day leaving a trail of slime
twelve feet wide across all the back gardens on this side of the
street. Nobody knew where he had come from but he ate all the garden
waste and the children just loved climbing all over it. He just got a
bit lairy sometimes if they drank beer outside. Otherwise it was no
trouble. The council had tried to make a fuss but Chris, a lawyer,
pointed out that it was a protected species and so they'd had to
leave it alone.
Eventually
the conversation turned to other things, work, holidays, the colour
of sunsets in Tuscany. Jane cornered me in the kitchen and told me
where you could get good help round here, and a tame midwife if we
were thinking of starting a family. It started to grow dark, perhaps
a little early.
'Looks
like rain,' said Jane and called out to Oscar to come in. I looked
out, Oscar, Chris and Tony all piled into the kitchen. There seemed
to be blue sky everywhere and yet it was still getting darker. In any
case, the snail didn't seem to like it and suddenly withdrew into
its, his, shell rasping back across the lawn, tearing up great sods
of turf, all of it expertly folded back into the elephantine mottled
brown and green shell. It really was dark, and quiet too. Even the
birds had stopped singing, like during an eclipse. And then two great
yellow pincers, like one of those special cranes for unloading
container ships, plunged down on either side of the shell and hoisted
it up. A shriek filled the air, like a jumbo jet calling to its mate.
Furniture and toys shot across the decking and thudded into the
window. It wobbled dangerously but held. An eye peered in, filling
the entire pane: a great dark spot in the middle of milky yellow sea.
It flashed left and right, assessing us for edibility. With another
thundering screech it left into the air, throwing slates from the
roof and flattening the shed. And calm returned.
'Oh
well,' said Chris and sighed. 'Shall we try the Gewürztraminer?'
There was a cry from the garden.
'Dad,
Dad! Look!' It was Oscar. He was struggling up the steps to the
decking. Clutched to his chest, both arms wrapped around it was a
large pearlescent ball, like a pale space hopper, inside it a shadow,
curling and uncurling.
'Can I
keep it, Dad? Can I?' he said.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Writing credits
I've written several published pieces now so I thought I'd make a list. I'm not counting any reports for work (such as the one on the cost to the DWP of the UK changing currency from Sterling to Euro).
Cugel's Compendium of Indispensable Advantages (A few bits and pieces, Pelgrane Press)
Gaming
101 Lifeforms (a couple of creatures in this BITS publication)Cugel's Compendium of Indispensable Advantages (A few bits and pieces, Pelgrane Press)
The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game (the map and much background research, Pelgrane Press)
The Excellent Prismatic Spray (Volume 1, Number 3) (a scenario, Pelgrane Press)
The Excellent Prismatic Spray (Volume 1, Number 4/5) (a scenario part ii, Pelgrane Press)
The Excellent Prismatic Spray (Volume 1, Number 6) (a scenario part iii, Pelgrane Press)
Several short scenarios for Dying Earth published on their website (marked small PDF, Pelgrane Press)
Magnus Liber Rerum (Vol. 1 - 2004) (a scenario Trumpton Riots, The Unspoken Word)
Cold City (a scenario, Contested Ground Studios)
Bookhounds of London (a piece on The Book of the Smoke, Pelgrane Press)
Twisted 50s (a campaign frame for Mortal Coil, my first solo piece, Galileo Games)
Trail of Cthulhu Demo Game (Pelgrane Press)
The Armitage Files (a piece on improvised gaming, Pelgrane Press)
The Book of the Smoke (the prologue, one location and one character, Pelgrane Press)
More Things in Heaven and Earth: A Campaign Frame Compilation (reprint of Twisted 50s, Galileo Games)
I was the editor of Places to Go, People to Be, an Aussie webzine for some years and contributed many pieces.
I've also done some small pieces of translation notably in Critical Miss (Issue 11 - Autumn 2011)
Fiction
I've had two stories published so far:
Breaking Through in Shotguns v. Cthulhu (Stone Skin Press)
Mother knows best in The Lion and The Aardvark (Stone Skin Press)
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