Quick Thoughts - I Ain't Scared of No Erotica

I have, as I write this, actually read through all I wanted to for October 2015! It was an insane month for fiction, with over 80 stories and over 100 reviews for me (including poetry and nonfiction). At the same time, it has also been my busiest month for my stories coming out, with a story in Lamplight at the beginning of the month, another in Betwixt in the middle, and now a new m/m erotic story out just in time for Halloween!

The story, "A Friendly Ghostbusting," is available here.
The anthology it appears in, HAUNTED HOTTIES VOLUME 2, is available here.
A sample of my story can be read here.
A new release extra on the Torquere Blog will be here when it goes live.

Ah, erotica. Somehow I don't think I would write a story with an internet faux-celebrity named Caspar the Friendly Ghostbuster if it was for more "literary" audiences. Which is probably why erotica is fun to write at times. Not that it can't be deep and meaningful and layered, but that sometimes all I want to write is some fun drama with a sprinkle of puns and a lot of hot sex. I swear I want to write like an entire novel with these characters, because they are incredibly fun and because I love ghost hunting shows. I mean, they're all ridiculous but they are also entertaining and they all remind me of Ghost Facers from Supernatural.

As I think back on this story I can already see that with erotica I must have something of a pattern. Of a soft resistance, some sort of small perceived betrayal that turns out to be the product of confusion, guilt, and not being honest. The truth comes out, people have the choice to reconcile, and people normally do. With sex. This story is also kind of informed by reading erotica and the ridiculousness that it can be, sometimes. And loving it and wanting a bit to participate. Both this and "The Assistant's Contraption" were incredibly fun to write and spilled out of me mostly in one sitting, and I hope they are similarly fun to read.

Sometimes I feel very guilty about writing erotica. Because I don't have all that much time to write and this will never "count" toward SFWA membership or anything like that. It doesn't pay pro rates. But then, I'm not really at the point where all of my non-smut stories are pulling in pro rates, and these stories are so fun and I get physical books to hold onto and I will admit they're a lot easier to write and to get published than non-smut stories. I think the key will be balancing the smut at the non-smut. Because I don't think I can stop writing it now. I get too much out of it. It makes me smile and it does bring in some money and in the sea of rejections it's something that gives me some hope that my writing isn't utter rubbish.

So yeah, go check it out if you have the time, money, and inclination. Sadly, it is not free, but if it's something you don't mind spending on, you have my utmost thanks. Stay sexy, people!

All the best,

Charles Payseur

Regular Sips - Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef by Cassandra Khaw

Okay, so October might have been an incredibly full one for short fiction, but I couldn't resist when I was asked to look at this new novella. Cooking! Urban Fantasy! Gruesome Deaths! There are few things in this world that will entice me more, and as this is a novella it didn't exactly break the bank time-wise. It is the longest single story I've reviewed on this site, but I've been meaning to read more novellas and this was a great place to start. And just in time for Halloween! I'm rather new to novellas, and very new to Abaddon Books, but given the quality of this story I might need to go out and see what else they offer. To the review!

Quick Sips - Tor.com October 2015

October at Tor has actually seemed a bit of a reprieve from super-long stories, which is rather nice given the story-load for this month. That doesn't mean that they don't bring the quality, as these four stories are all rather dense reads, building some amazing settings and worlds that seem to flit and bend and dance. The settings are alive, characters in their own rights, and it is quite the treat to discover each one. From the alien world of the Cyclopes to the onion-like layers of interlocking dimensions, the stories bring some startling ideas, and do not disappoint in executing them. To the reviews!

Art by Tommy Arnold

Quick Sips - Terraform October 2015

I'm probably missing one story from the October Terraform, but as it might be coming out on Friday (I'm pretty sure that's what their schedule has changed to, rather than the previous Monday releases), I'm just going to roll it into the November Terraform reviews. It's a nice mix of stories this month, with a look at income inequality and...pets. Which might seem a strange pairing but which work nicely here. There are a number of interesting plot twists (and not just that there is a 5K+ story at a publication that claims to stick to under 2K) and a fun range of characters. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fantasy Scroll #9

Well October is really trying to kill me, though perhaps with kindness if the new issue of Fantasy Scroll Magazine is anything to go by. The publication normally puts out a pretty stacked ToC, but this issue has not a single reprint so far as I can tell, which means nine original short stories (only one of them flash) and a graphic story. I'd mind more if everything wasn't so good, once again proving that Fantasy Scroll knows how to satisfy regardless of speculative genre. Horror makes a bit more of a statement this month, perhaps because the issue releases so close to Halloween, but otherwise there is just about everything a person could ask for, from swashbuckling fantasy adventures to more ponderous and emotionally devastating science fiction. So without further ado, to the reviews!

Art by Jessica Tung Chi

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 10/05/2015, 10/12/2015, and 10/19/2015

Okay, here we are in the fourth week of October, and with these three weeks of Strange Horizons the month shows no signs of slowing down. The good news is that the fund drive that had been going on was fully funded! So there will be even more great stories, poems, and nonfiction next year. The other good news is that there is a lot of fiction and poetry that was released as part of the bonus issue. I say good news because, while it might destroy me, there is an awful lot to like about these pieces, many of which deal with the way we tell stories, and what we choose to tell stories about. And I just need to get to the reviews!

Art by Rachel Kahn

Quick Thoughts - Horror for the Holidays

So Halloween is fast approaching and it seems I don't have anything new out this week, so I'm back to my old tricks and old thoughts. And today I want to talk about horror. Because, well, Halloween obviously, but also because I seem to write horror from time to time without really knowing it. Or I guess sometimes I know. But horror is a strange thing to me, because some don't consider horror speculative, occasionally even when it really, really is.

Perhaps surprising no one, but I think the idea of horror as a genre is kind of weird. Because horror isn't exactly a set of tropes. It isn't spaceships or elves or anything like that, but horror can incorporate spaceships and elves. The movie Alien is a horror film, in my opinion, while also being science fiction. Aliens is a bit more action movie but still has a lot of solid horror. There are many movies that combine horror with something else. Because, at its core, horror is nebulous. It doesn't have firm edges, or edges at all. It is mercurial. You can't point at a collection of plot elements and say "Look, there's horror" the way you can with science fiction or fantasy or even "realistic fiction." Horror is defined, instead, by feeling.

I laugh to myself sometimes when people want to talk up horror as so great but put down stories that have "the feels." Because horror is all about the feels. Literally all about. A story that has a serial killer but no feeling of horror, not suspense or discomfort or any of that, is not a horror. A story about a possessed doll that kills people without the care to make the prose feel scary is not horror. I suppose here there's some subjectivity that could be argued, that I'm putting some sort of "It's not horror unless I say it's good enough" limit on the genre, but that's not what I want to be saying either. I mean that it has to be written to evoke a feeling. Revulsion or fear or awe or something. Something. The point of horror is to make the reader feel something, be confronted by something dark and unsettling. The idea of staring into the dark and being confronted there by something.

But as long as that criteria is met there horror can be anything. So horror, while kind of being nothing, is also everything, can be science fiction or fantasy, slipstream or Western. It's something that frees the genre but also makes it a bit fraught. Because apparently being wishy-washy about genre is not taken kindly to in some spheres. People want stories to pick a side. Be one thing. Categorize easily. And what I like about horror is that I can find horror that speaks to me, that I can find horror mixed in with all my other genres. You got sci fi in my horror. You got horror in my sci fi. And thus Peanut Butter Cup Aliens were born (I can't be the only one who likes pushing the middles up and out the top of the cup, thus making a great visual to go with my bad joke).

So here, sort of like with humor (whose point is also to provoke feeling, but a much different kind), horror isn't exactly something that exists free of other descriptors. It might be the largest emphasis, the most important or appropriate descriptor, but horror kind of always has to exist along something else. A crime horror. A sci fi horror. A fantasy horror. So I strongly resist the idea that horror isn't SFF by definition. It doesn't have to be SFF, but it still often is. At least, when I write it I tend toward SFF horror. Many writers do. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So lift a glass of appropriately Halloween-themed grog to horror, the genre that is not a genre, the genre of feelings, the genre of me hiding under the blanket until the scary part is over. To horror! Thanks for reading!

All the best,

Charles Payseur