EDITORIAL
Big Bang
INTERVIEWS
A Chat with Cat Rambo
The Writers Room – Christopher Balzak
Featured Film Maker – Christopher Kezelos
FICTION
An Echo in the Shell by Beth Cato
Fleep by Jeremy Sim
The Message Between the Words by Grayson Bray Morris
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Editors: Darryl Knickrehm & David Rees-Thomas Illustrations: Darryl Knickrehm
Contribution Writer: Alisa Alering
https://waylinesmagaizne.com
Welcome to issue 1 of Waylines Magazine!
We are thrilled to finally be launching, and even more thrilled that you've taken the time to pop along and take a look.
And we can promise that we've got some great stories and films inside.
As we were putting together issue 1, a particular theme came to dominate our thinking in preparing the interviews, choosing and editing the stories, and selecting the films we wanted.
Decisions.
Decision making, whether it be long and ponderous, or split second and instinctive, takes place every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
Some we make with conscious thought, with planning, with foresight.
Some we make as we react to external or internal pressures, as we stumble forward in our lives.
Some we make, knowing, or not, that they will lead to hurt, or to disappointment.
Some we make, knowing our lives will be the better for it.
Some are more ambiguous, ready to surprise us at a later point.
Some are inevitable...
We made a decision on Sept 3rd, 2012 to start a science fiction magazine of our own. Along the way, we've encountered all the above, but ultimately that initial decision has led us here, to issue 1!
In issue 1, we have three short stories, three short films, a feature with Cat Rambo and her new collection, Near + Far, interviews with the authors, an in-depth interview with our Featured Film Maker - Christopher Kezelos, our film review section Screen Gems, and our regular Writer's Room feature, where Alisa caught up with the marvelous, Christopher Barzak!
Grayson Bray Morris takes us into the mind, and space craft, of Ankti Remsi and her struggle to reconcile her decisions in the past with that of the pressure of the present in The Message Between the Words.
Beth Cato explores how family relationships can be devastatingly, and subtly redefined by sudden change to one member, and how their decisions impact their future in the heartbreaking An Echo in the Shell.
And...
Jeremy Sim sends us to the most unique hotel in the world with some of the most unusual guests ever to stay there, and definitely the most lively and interesting hotel owners we've seen this side of Fawlty Towers, in Fleep.
For our films this issue, we have-
Kevin Margo tells a very personal story in Grounded, exploring death through one pilot's crashlanding on a foreign planet. A fantastic visual sci-fi feast.
Francesco Calabrese has crafted an intricate and touching tale of a monster, bringing realism to the true-to-life horror story, Lovely Monster.
And finally...
We have a beautiful animation to show you - Christopher Kezelos's The Maker. A mesmerizing fantasy that will enchant you with its music, story and creatures.
We hope you enjoy the stories, the films and the interviews. If you want to send us a message, you can do so on our site, and we can also be found at Facebook and Twitter.
Also, Waylines is gearing up for Year Two and will be running our fund raising campaign from January 10-February 10, 2014. If you like the magazine, think about heading over to our Kickstarter campaign then. There are pledge rewards like posters, bookmarks, and our Zero Issue - an issue made just for our supporters. Help make Year Two a reality.
For now, enjoy Issue 1! Safe Journeys!
Sincerely,
D and D
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Our featured author for issue 1 is Cat Rambo and her book, Near + Far, which is now available from Hydra House books, either as a print edition, or as an e-book.
The book collects 12 “Near” stories and 12 “Far” stories, and part of the unique experience that is “Near + Far” is that it has been designed in a similar manner to the classic Ace Doubles of yesteryear. More on this in the interview below.
Ultimately, it’s the stories that matter, and included within these pages are some of the most heart wrenching, beautiful, odd, and downright funny stories you’re likely to read in any collection in 2013.
We could go on, but instead, how about we get Cat to speak about the collection herself:
Ace doubles. For those readers not familiar, what were they? And why did you decide to structure your collection, Near + Far, in a similar style?
Basically it’s two books bound together back to back; flip the book and you’ll find the companion volume. The formal name for it is tête-bêche, which means “head to tail.” I decided to go with that format for two reasons. One, the book started as a plan for two books, one containing near future stories and the other far future, and this seemed like a great way to combine them. Two, I read a lot of those Ace Doubles growing up and loved them. The format’s my homage to that important influence. a bit about the cover art, the artist, and the process of working with Hydra House Blished Two artists contributed art for the book. Both of the lovely covers were done by Sean Counley, an English artist. He did a marvelous job, producing evocative, interesting covers that each referenced a specific story. The interior art was done by a long-time friend, Mark W. Tripp. Part of the fun of arranging the book was deciding which piece would go with which story.
I loved working with Hydra House. Publisher Tod McCoy was patient, professional, innovative, and always as interested in and passionate about the book as I was.
The collection explores a wide variety of themes, and the two halves segue quite neatly with “Legends of the Gone.” “Therapy Buddha” was a story we found particularly compelling with its theme of social disconnect. Which story, or stories resonate with you the most, and why?
Wow, that’s a tough question. To some extent all the stories resonate for me. Having produced them, I can’t replicate that “click,” that lovely moment when a story speaks directly to a reader, for myself. Stories, though, where I feel I managed to adeptly hit the note I was striving for include “Amid the Words of War” and “The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each.” But there isn’t a single story in there that I’m not perfectly happy with, even the very odd ones like “Legends of the Gone.
We were drawn to the unique qualities embodied in the character of Tikka, from “Five Ways to fall in Love on Planet Porcelain.” What character, or characters do you feel a close bond to, and why?
Belinda in “Surrogates,” perhaps, and her dealings with a world in which she’s primarily part of a couple. And Ms. Liberty in “Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut,” which is actually inspired by a novel about Ms. Liberty and her group that I wrote in grad school.
If we didn’t have Cat Rambo, the writer, what other Cat Rambo might we expect to see?
I’m pretty sure it’d be either Cat Rambo the game designer or Cat Rambo the software developer. I’m a longtime gamer, and my work with Armageddon MUD was actually where I started learning how to program.
Another possibility is Cat Rambo the veterinarian. As a kid, the James Herriot books made a deep impression on me and that’s all I wanted to be for a year or two.
How have the web and other social media impacted upon your own writing career? Tell us a little b
it about the class you run concerning maintaining an online presence.
I’ve been very lucky in that many of my publications have been in online magazines, which I think helps build one’s name a bit more, perhaps, than some of the print publications. I fight a constant battle with social media – while it’s useful (and fun!) for building my brand, that’s still time that could be used for writing. That’s one of the things I emphasize in my Building An Online Presence for Writers class – how to do things efficiently and get the most use out of the time one spends poking around on the web getting distracted by cat pictures.
Most of my classes are taught online, using Google Hangouts, which always makes me feel so futuristic. In the round of classes that’s coming up, I’m offering the Online Presence class as well as some others: Writing F&SF Stories, a flash fiction workshop, The Art of the Book Review, Literary Techniques in Genre Fiction, Editing 101, First Pages, and Everything You Need to Know about Electronic Publishing (which I’m co-teaching with Tod McCoy, who knows much more about it than I.)
Who were a few writers who were formative influences for you, or ones that you hold with great affection?
I wouldn’t mind going back in time to hang out with some of my favorite writers: Joanna Russ, Theodore Sturgeon, Alice Sheldon, Fritz Leiber, and Thomas Burnett Swann all come to mind.
What are you working on at the moment, and where can we find more recent work of yours?
I am finishing up what I hope is the final! rewrite of the fantasy novel I’ve been working on for nigh a decade. Recent publications include a novella for the Fathomless Abyss series and “Grandmother,” which appeared as an Escape Pod original.
Publications coming up in 2013 include a couple of Daily Science Fiction appearances, a story I co-wrote with Ben Burgis in GigaNotoSaurus as well as Podcastle, and anthologies, including Athena Andreadis’ The Other Half of the Sky (space opera), Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s Beyond the Sun (SF), and Airships and Automatons, edited by Charles P. Zaglanis (steampunk).
Cat Rambo has edited anthologies as well as critically-acclaimed Fantasy Magazine. Her work with Fantasy Magazine earned her a nomination for a World Fantasy Award in 2012. She teaches at Bellevue College as well as runs a highly successful series of online classes.
She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow.
John Barth described Cat Rambo’s writings as “works of urban mythopoeia.” Among the places in which her stories have appeared are ASIMOV’S, WEIRD TALES, CLARKESWORLD, and STRANGE HORIZONS, and her work has consistently garnered mentions and appearances in year’s best of anthologies.
Cat Rambo maintains a web site here- https://www.kittywumpus.net Her online classes can be found here- https://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/upcoming-online-classes/
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Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel, One for Sorrow. His second book, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree Awards. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. He grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English in suburban and rural communities outside of Tokyo, Japan. His most recent book is Birds and Birthdays, a collection of surrealist fantasy stories. Forthcoming is Before and Afterlives, a collection of supernatural fantasies. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University. Find out more at: https://christopherbarzak.com/
FAVORITE AND LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR WRITING SPACE?
My favorite thing about my writing space is the artwork that friends and family have made for me, based on some of my novels and stories, that surrounds me there. I'm lucky to be friends with some amazing local artists who are sometimes inspired to make visual variations of things I've written, and I'm lucky enough to have been gifted with some of that artwork. They surround me like talismans, good spirits, and that helps me as I work on writing whatever I'm currently preoccupied with.
My least favorite thing is the very old carpet, which really needs taken up, which I'm doing this coming summer, taking the floors back to wood. I look forward to buying a nice rug to lay under my desk.
PROCESS PORN, PLEASE. WHAT IS YOUR TYPICAL WRITING DAY?
Process porn is difficult for me, mainly because I don't have what I think of as typical writing days. I'm not the sort of writer who writes every day, which is the typical thing you hear you're supposed to do in all of those books about writing and how to be a writer. Granted, I have gone through many periods of my life when I have written every day, sometimes all day and all night long, and I have even written on days when I've been struck down by illness (when I lived in Japan and was recovering from the mumps, for instance), but in essence, I need to be compelled to write. A vision or a voice has to snag on my imagination, my spirit, and drag me to the table to lay it down in words. If that's not there, I'm not interested.
There were periods in my life when I was younger that I didn't feel compelled to write, but I thought I should be trying to write anyway, because of all those voices from writing teachers or authors of how-to writing books saying you're supposed to. It doesn't work that way for me, that write-every-day wisdom. Whenever I try to force myself to write without that force tugging at me for some mysterious reason, I tend to write things that I'm annoyed with or frustrated by or even things that just plain bore me. After a while, I gave myself permission not to write when I don't feel like I have a story to tell. It was very freeing to do that, because by giving myself permission to not write, I opened myself up to new stories, to new experiences. When I'm not writing something, I'm able to watch new movies, to read new books, to go for long walks in the woods or to even just sit around with my thoughts flowing in whatever direction they want to go in. When I snag on a vision or a voice, though, I can't do much else but listen to it, to write it down, until I've brought it to completion, and all of those other things go by the wayside. When I'm compelled to write, I may write a couple of pages a day, at any time of day, or I might write five or six before I feel like I need to break from the dream and let it come back to me. There's a kind of dance or a movement between the writer and story, a mediation that occurs in the process of writing (at least for me). Writing, for me, is a little bit like trying to lure a flighty ghost to come to me. I have to make it feel welcome. I can't move too quickly, or it will disappear in my hands if I try too hard to grasp hold of it.
BIGGEST THING THAT KEEPS YOU FROM WRITING WHEN YOU SHOULD BE WRITING?
Myself. Always myself. No excuses. If I have a story demanding to be told and I'm not doing it, it's my own fault. I can make time for it, however busy my day job teaching university has become, however many things are going on in my life in general. I can make time to write, and if I'm not writing when I have a story to tell, then it's just me being lazy, or in some cases, afraid I won't be able to make the story right, so I put it off until I feel like I can't put it off any longer. I do think that might be part of process, though, too. This waiting, sometimes, for a buildup to the point where I sit down and feel like the story's been sitting inside me for so long that I'm going to work really hard on it after such a wait to bring it into being.
WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU WERE READING BUT AREN'T (BECAUSE IT DOESN'T EXIST)?
I wish I was reading a novel called Albondocani, by the Danish writer, Isak Dinesen, who had apparently been working on a book of that name at the end of her (Isak Dinesen was a male pseudonym for the Baroness Karen Blixen) life. Her secretary felt the title meant something along the lines of "I'll pull myself
together," which Dinesen often said was one of the mottos she lived by, and that the book would have been a kind of mosaic novel, or novel-in-stories. Dinesen wrote some of the finest Gothic tales of the twentieth century. I would love to have seen this novel.
SUPER POWER YOU WISH YOU HAD?
I would really like to bend reality to my will, if I could, just for those times in my life when I feel powerless or unable to make my life go the way I want it. If not that, because that's pretty damned powerful, then I'd at least like the convenience of teleportation. I hate flying and driving, though I do like to take trains.
WHAT SHOULD A READER DO AFTER READING THIS?
Read one of my books or stories and let me know what you think (Birds and Birthdays). I like hearing from readers about things I've written. It's worth more than money or anything else, hearing from people who have read things I've written and have something to say about it. It's the truest and realest kind of reward for this kind of work, I think, knowing your stories are out there, becoming a part of other people's lives.
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