Recently in Announcements Category
Coming Soon: Requiems for the Departed
Unreality-SF.net Story of the Year
The Tangled Bank - now out
The last month has been a little crazy on the day-job front, but I finally got around to posting this, my first sale - a short story in the new anthology "The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder and Evolution".
"Hopeful Monsters: A Darwinian Fairytale" puts a twist on the traditional oral tale, by retelling it from an evolutionary perspective. No Big Bad Wolf here, just natural selection!
Buy the book Lulu.com (ebook) - POD paperback coming soon!
I Do Two anthology goes live
The I Do Two anthology is now available in pdf here!
Other formats are in the pipeline and should be coming along very soon, and it has gone to the printers. So it should be available in print in about a fortnight.
All profits from this anthology will be donated to the Lambda Legal
Defense to support their fight for marriage equality for all. So if you
buy this anthology, you won't only get a great read, you'll also be
doing a good deed 
It's a good hefty volume. Nearly 100K long, containing 22 stories from authors ranging from the well known - like James Buchanan - to newly discovered rising stars - like D.C Juris. And as part of the team who chose the stories, I can vouch that every single one of them is good.
My contribution is called Inner Truth, which is a glimpse at the happy ending of John and Alfie from False Colors, but told through the eyes of one Joe Malley who has his own problems:
Excerpt
Inner Truth
Alex Beecroft
"Malley, you're bleeding. Report to the doctor."
"Oh no, sir," says I, looking down, covering up the seeping blood with my hand while I try to press it back in. Funny how it feels cold, when it comes out so hot. "That's French blood, sir. None of mine."
He can see it isn't. He's a fine old gent is Captain Cavendish. Must have been a looker in his youth, and still, at sixty whatever it is, spry as a youngster. He don't miss much, neither, least of all the way I've drawn my jacket closed over the tell tale blooming of red.
"You have someone waiting for you?"
"My Jenny, sir."
He must be thinking, right now, that it makes no sense not to see the ship's doctor for free, when on land I'll have to pay. I keep my eyes on my shoes, let go the bite on my bottom lip--don't want to seem as scared as I am. He gives me a look, like he's going to say something. But then he don't. Just nods. "Carry on then."
Fine old gent, like I say. He knows when to back off from other folk's secrets.
Meanwhile I've got to get this bleeding stopped again. Thought I had--thought I'd tied it up tight. Always keep bandages in my sea chest for that very purpose.
The chest's by my feet. Maybe it was carrying that up on deck what opened the wound again. Maybe it was waving to Jenny. Over the side and there she is, her hand up high, white against the dockyard cranes. She's holding her shawl close with the other hand, the ruffles of her cap like white petals around the flower of her face. Bugger me if she ain't got more beautiful over the months we've been out, and she looks like Spring. Spring in a drab bonnet.
First order of the day, I think, take my prize money and buy her something nice to wear. She didn't ought to have to look like a poor-house girl no more. I lift my sea chest again and the scrape across my ribs opens up like a mouth, screaming. Under my jacket I can feel liquid soaking into the waistband of my breeches. Everything swings about me like I was drunk.
Second order, then. After she'd bound me up again, in private. Tighter.
I make it down the side. Don't know how--all the muscles in the right hand side of my body shrieking like demons, claws in my skin. And I'm not ever as strong as I think I ought to be. Always reckon I can do more than I can, always get let down.
Pushing and shoving on the quayside, as there is whenever we gets home, the Sparrowhawk being the most successful privateer in Charlestown. Wives and sweethearts and whores and families and chairmen and blokes with strings of horses to sell--for them as want to get home quick--and peddlers selling novelties and beer and pies, come flocking round, thick as fleas. We're a curiosity at Charlestown, which is mostly built for the export of china clay. We give the place some glamour, as it sorely needs, and they love us for it.
I can feel the flood at my knee as I push my way through the crowd, and there's floating white sparkles around the edges of my eyes and I feel like I'm flying. Sick, faint, weightless. "Hold me down, love," I says, throwing my arms around Jenny, "I'm going to float away."
It's all worth it, for her, though. She's brown haired and snub nosed. She's got a quick, clever mouth and hands almost as rough as mine from scrubbing floors. For all she's modest, her breasts make smooth mounds under her white fichu, like biteable moons. She smells of soap and lye. Always has. I likes it.
"Joe! Oh Joe! Thank God you're home!" she's saying, with her arms tight about me and her face in my shoulder. The bonnet pokes me in the ear, and maybe it's that that's making everything roar so loud I can barely hear her talking.
"Listen, love," I says, "I'm hurt. We've got to get somewhere you can bind me up. How about your house?"
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Joe," she raises her head finally, and her eyes are grey like the fog around me, swimming with tears. "They threw me out. The mistress heard tell we weren't wed proper in church. Lor, she did tear into me like as a fury. Called me a scarlet woman and a spawn of Satan and more besides. Dismissed me on the spot with no pay, the old besom."
I've got pay, I think. Can't remember whether I said it or not. Things is fuzzying up around me like as there's mould growing over my eyeballs. See a lot of that on ship--mould--never did see it from the inside before though. "Get us the chest, love," I says. There's a scrimmage of people about the sea-chests, all sitting on the dock, piled haphazard, and I'm sorry to have to tell her to take them on but she's got knees and elbows like the rest of them. "There's... money in there. We can... rent a... room."
I'm on my knees when she gets back. The cobbles have raised themselves up in the air like so many iron crows, flapping about me, and the wind from under their wings is icy cold. I've got a hand on the ground, the other's still trying to keep the blood in. I can feel it well and trickle out between my fingers, and I bite my lip for real this time, chew on it and think I must not faint. I must not faint.
"There ain't no money in here." Open lid. Flash of her face, smeared over grey sky like white paint. Jangling noise in my ears as I paw through old linen looking for the bag of coins, but she's right, it's gone.
It's gone and I'm going to fall on my face on the dock. And someone's going to pick me up and take me to the doctor.
"No!"
"Malley?" Jangling noise. Snort of horsey hay breath in my hair. There's a voice I should answer on pain of lashes, and God knows, I don't want lashes. "What's the trouble, man?"
I don't want to cry. I try and fend him off with the red hand. "No doctors! No doctors, please!"
A drop falls from my fingers, crimson as a poppy. It crashes and spatters on the pavement, and so do I. Then there's unwelcome, all conquering dark.
~*~*~*~
I Do Two is now available here!
By Starlight in Interzone #225, out 12 November
Interzone #225 has gone to print featuring my short story "By Starlight". The issue will hit bookshop shelves and subscribers' doorsteps on 12 November.
The other stories featured in issue #225 come from Jason Sanford, Lavie Tidhar, Colin Harvey, Shannon Page and Jay Lake. You can see a preview of the beautiful wrap-around cover by Adam Tredowski on the forums at SFF Chronicles.
Interzone, from TTA Press, can be found in any Borders, Foyles or Forbidden Planet. Some other large independant bookstores may carry it and it can be found in selected places outside the UK. Alternatively you can ask WH Smiths or your local newsagent to order it in. And if short fiction is your thing, you can subscribe direct from TTA press for just £21 for 6 issues - that's a whole year of great SF and fantasy fiction. I'm a big fan of the magazine and I'm delighted to be in its pages.
As "By Starlight" is the first story of mine ever to hit the high street, I'm excited and nervous in equal measure! It's one thing to get a critique from a friend or fellow writer that I know well, but I'm about to enter a world of online reviews by complete strangers. Sandpits in which to bury heads may have to be purchased... or if people like it, perhaps the mooted Lighters novel may materialise next year...
Interview at Unreality-SF.Net
The good people at Unreality-SF.Net have just posted an interview with me. Interview contains the following three words: Spartacus, handicap, and chunks. Yes it does.Submissions call: I Do Two anthology
After the huge success of I DO, an anthology in support of Marriage Equality, we're delighted to announce that there'll be a second volume, I DO TWO, with a planned publication date of 14th February 2010.
The project has an editorial team - Alex Beecroft, Charlie Cochrane, Sophia Deri-Bowen, Lee Rowan - and not forgetting Kris Jacen at MLR who have kindly agreed to be the publishers again.
What we now need are stories; heart warming, thought provoking, life affirming, most importantly top quality stories. The deadline for submissions is December 1st 2009, with decisions announced on 1st January 2010. (Please adhere to the submissions guidelines given below.)
Feel free to pass this on.
The I DO TWO Team.
Submissions guidelines:
The anthology, titled "I DO, TWO", is a sequel to the January 2009 charity anthology "I DO!" All authors donate their stories to benefit the Lambda Legal Fund. The collection covers a range of times, places and people, and illustrates the universality of love and commitment.
To date, I DO has raised over $1500 for the cause of equal rights in marriage.
I DO TWO will be a similar, companion volume, published by MLR Press. (Contracts will be in line with their standard contract.)
We're looking for stories between 1,000 words and 10,000 words long. M/M, F/F, Bi and transgender stories are welcome. There is no strict theme, but we have certain things we do *not* want to see, for example stories which undermine the purpose of the anthology - that is, no stories which are about how gay people do not want to get married or do not deserve to get married. We do not want anything that reinforces negative stereotypes - no snuff fiction, scat, golden showers, necrophilia or underage sex. Because of the potential copyright issues, we cannot accept fanfiction, either.
If you possess the copyright for your story and it isn't currently under exclusive contract to anyone else, we are happy to consider stories which have been published before. Please make a note in the covering e-mail.
As long as your story follows these guidelines and comes within the word-count, please send it to Lee.Rowan@yahoo.com. Your story does not need to have an explicit marriage-related plot or even a happy ending! Any story that celebrates the theme of love as valid, no matter the genders of the players, is welcome.
This
is for a charity anthology, so you will not get paid. All profits will
go straight to the Lamdba Legal fund. Through education, litigation and
public policy work, Lambda Legal works to achieve full recognition of
the civil rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people, and persons
with HIV. Since their founding in 1973, Lambda Legal has become an
active and vital part of the GLBT civil rights movement
instrumental in the fight for same-sex marriage rights both nationally
and, most notably, in the fight to strike down California's Proposition
8.
Deadline for submissions is 1st December 2009.
Thank you!
Afterlife sold to Damnation Books!
So I get up stupidly early this morning because I have to be at work for 8.30 to open up. I'm tired because sleeping on a bed propped up only by a box of vinyl records is uncomfortable. I'm irate, because it's Monday morning and there are no clean cereal bowls in the kitchen (I suppose that's my own fault for not washing up the night before, but whatever). I'm lethargic because the very thought of going to work saps all the energy from me.But I pull myself together and head for work anyway. And then I get a flat tire halfway down Huntingdon Road, so I have to walk the rest of the way to work. I'm late. I'm unimpressed. I hate the world. Everything sucks, especially me.
And then I check my emails. And Damnation Books have offered me a contract for AFTERLIFE! Squee! Cue me going into panic mode, as I always do when these things happen, running out of the building with much flapping of hands and generally not believing it. I am SO stoked about this - I adore AFTERLIFE - it's one of my favourite things I've written, with some of my favourite characters - and I'm really impressed by Damnation Books, so this is awesome. AWESOME.
The Never-Ending Sacrifice published
Today is the official publication date for my new Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel, The Never-Ending Sacrifice - and there's a nice review already from Trekmovie.Com.
