Writing

Kat Kruger wraps up Madgeburg Trilogy

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The Night Is FoundI had the pleasure of interviewing Kat Kruger about the first two books in her Madgeburg Trilogy last year. In The Night Has Teeth and The Night Has Claws, we meet American teen Connor Lewis studying in Paris and getting to know the other foreign students. He discovers that not only are werewolves real, but that his unique heritage makes him a target for differing factions, whether he likes it or not.

I won’t say any more at the risk of huge spoilers! But both books are great reads and I highly recommend both. (And the interview below will make a lot more sense if you’ve read them.) Kat was kind enough to take some time to answer my questions about her third and final book in this series, The Night is Found.

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“The Wolves of Vimy” in Kneeling in the Silver Light

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kneeling-in-the-silver-lightIt’s been hard to sit on this one, as I was very very keen to submit a story to Kneeling in the Silver Light: Stories From the Great War. That was way back in November 2013, but now editor Dean M. Drinkel has released the table of contents, so I can announce that I have a story, “The Wolves of Vimy” in this collection.

Kneeling in the Silver Light is published by The Alchemy Press and released in time for FantasyCon, held this year in York.

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Werewolves, writing, and the first half of 2014

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Wait, what? It’s July already? Not sure how the first half of 2014 burned up like that.  Oh wait, yes I am: I’ve been writing, editing and submitting like a fool. Well, a circumspect fool.

The year has been full of werewolves so far.

Writing

I meant to announce this earlier, but a brand-new werewolf story of mine, “Caged,” was accepted into Guns and Romances, a new anthology from Dark Continents Publishing. I’ve wanted to send them something for a while, so when the submission call went out, I thought hard about how I could come up with a story that would fit DC’srequirements for the antho. If possible, I wanted it to fit into the cycle of stories I’ve been working on for the last year and a half, and meet most of the criteria for Long Hidden, which is something I’ve been trying to do with new stories since submitting to that anthology last year.

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Marginalization, speculative fiction and writing for Long Hidden, part 3: the where

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Red Sucker Lake (ca. 1920s) - Print #253 Red Sucker Lake 1 - See more at: http://www.eastsideroadauthority.mb.ca/community-redsuckerlake.html#sthash.aBEB8dFu.dpuf
Red Sucker Lake, ca. 1920s. See more at: http://www.eastsideroadauthority.mb.ca

I’ve written in previous posts about why I wanted to write for Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History and how I went about it. This post will be a bit shorter, as it is mainly about other details that you don’t need to know to enjoy the story, but that you might enjoy knowing anyway. Plus: maps!

(Also, did you know, that Long Hidden is available as of May 9?)

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Marginalization, speculative fiction and writing for Long Hidden, part 2: the how

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In a previous post, I talked about why I wrote and submitted a short story to Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History. Given the differences between my personal background and that of the main character in the story, I had to do a lot of research just to write the first draft.  This post is about that.

English: Crowd gathered outside old City Hall,...
Crowd gathered outside old City Hall, at Main Street and William Avenue, during the Winnipeg General Strike. Visible on the left are the Union Bank of Canada building and Leland Hotel. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The main character, Thomas Greyeyes, lives in a different era from me (the story is set in 1919), is a First World War veteran, is an Anishinaabe man who worked as a trapper in northern Manitoba, and has barely seen his children in years. I’m of English and Icelandic descent and grew up in the late 20th century. About the only things I had in common with my main character are where the story is set (Winnipeg, where I have lived most my life) and age — Thomas and I are both around 40 years old. And, like him, I’m a father.

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Marginalization, speculative fiction, and writing for Long Hidden, part I: the why

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Writing and submitting a story for Long Hidden has changed the way I approach speculative fiction. Probably not enough, but it’s a start.

If you’re not familiar with Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, click on over and see what it’s all about. One of the purposes of the anthology edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, published by Crossed Genres, is to put marginalized people at the centre of the story, with the added context of real-world history blended with speculative elements.

A big part of the reason I wanted to submit a piece to Long Hidden was I wasn’t sure I could do it.

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