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Toilets in the Couch Teleportation Universe

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 9th slot in the Table of Contents is the second of the Couch Teleportation Universe  stories: “Waste Management”

I mentioned in my last post on the story behind Everyone Needs a Couch  that many people wanted to hear the other side of Tanker’s sad story. So the couch makes a second appearance with Lorna Watkowski, Tanker’s ex-girlfriend, in Waste Management.

challenging destiny coverSince I’d had such a quick and amazing success with Couch, I wrote the follow-up story with Oceans of the Mind as the ideal magazine to buy the story.

Oceans  didn’t work out, but that’s okay.

I had another funny story written, and I wasn’t going to allow a rejection to slow me down!

Many writers return to the universes they’ve created. I loved the planet Forbi, especially the scum-lords who own all the real estate–carnivores native to Forbi known as the Braklez. They’re a hoot to write, and I had the chance to introduce several more Braklez characters in Waste Management, including the first female, Alawas.

My second favourite species, the Drips return in Waste Management. They’re squishy, multi-tentacled creatures whose skin turns various shades depending on their mood. They secrete ooze from their “many orifices” allowing me the opportunity to insert “Drip ooze” jokes. Who doesn’t love to chuckle over Drip ooze? 🙂

toiletThe protagonist, Lorna, is an engineer hired to improve the toilet designs on a space station. And we all know, from a fairly early age, that toilet jokes never go out of fashion. If you don’t believe me, try reading one of Dave Pilkey’s Captain Underpants  books.

I don’t want to spoil the plot in Waste Management, but make sure you’re not eating chicken noodle soup while reading this tale. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for causing you to shoot a noodle out your nose! Believe me, it can happen. That’s why the phrase, “Is that a noodle?” makes my kids laugh every time.

Fun Fact

Back when I was submitting Waste Management  to magazine markets, I was also shopping around The Wind and the Sky.

neo-op five coverOriginally, I submitted Waste Management  to Neo-Opsis and The Wind and the Sky  to Challenging Destiny.

Both stories were rejected by their respective markets. Total sad-face, right?

But then, for the next round of submissions, I pulled a switcheroonie, sending The Wind and the Sky  to Neo-Opsis and Waste Management  to Challenging Destiny.

And both markets BOUGHT the respective stories.

The lesson to be learned here: sometimes a switcheroonie is a writers’ best friend.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

Everyone Actually Needs a Couch

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 8th slot in the Table of Contents is the first of the Couch Teleportation Universe  stories: “Everyone Needs a Couch”

My first-ever published story is: Everyone Needs a Couch.

Amazingly, I sold the story to the first market I submitted it to.

I sold Couch  on January 12th, 2002 to Oceans of the Mind, a Science Fiction magazine that no longer exists. It was published in 2003 for their September Mysteries issue.

So when people ask about my first sale, I respond, “It’s a Science Fiction comedy mystery.”

writing March 2002 miniThis is a picture of me writing/editing in the spring of 2002. It’s possible that I was actually working on Couch  that day. I love how there’s a bottle of Heinz Ketchup on the table, since back then every meal involved HK.

I love writing comedy. Probably because sarcasm is one of my favourite forms of communication. And Tanker’s life is the ultimate hard-luck-writer’s tale. Which leads me to the following insight…

When you begin your writing career, you often hear this advice:

Don’t write about a writer who’s trying (and probably failing) to sell their work.

Don’t write comedy because it’s really hard to get right.

Don’t begin a story with dialogue.

I break all three of these rules in Everyone Needs a Couch.

If you’re starting out, it is really important to understand and follow the rules of the trade. But you should also be brave enough to occasionally break the rules.

Read my writing tip post: Following the Rules.

Then read my writing tip post: Breaking the Rules.

Fun Fact

Beginning with my broke-student years (mid-to-late 80s) and ending with my young-messy-kids-at-home years (mid-to-late 90s), I used to have a hand-me-down couch in my living room. The couch had originally belonged to my grandparents.

Yeah, that’s right. My grandparents.

Chuck Lenora Chris on couch miniI think they might’ve bought the couch in the 1950s (1960s at the latest), and furniture manufacturers sure don’t build couches to last that long now. It was old and somewhat ratty (we used to cover it with a quilt to hide its ugliness), but virtually indestructible. Here’s a shot of of the couch, including my aunt, uncle, and cousin in the early 70s.

What made the couch so unique was that it was an old-fashioned two-piece sectional, designed to fit into a corner so that each half of the couch had an armrest on one side and nothing on the other side so it could sit right up against an end-table.

My grandparents used to have their entertainment unit (which consisted of a radio and a turntable that played 78s, 45s, and 33s) in the corner, and each open-ended piece of the couch was placed up against the unit.

E on couch July 2002 comboWhen the couch was in my possession, we used to push the two halves together. (Except for that one co-op term when my apartment was so small that I only had room for HALF the couch.) My kids–and the occasional unsuspecting guest–would sit too close to the middle and fall through the gap onto the floor! (as my younger son demonstrates with his head in 2002) The couch sat on hardwood floors and we had no way to fasten the two pieces together.

Suffice it to say, that old couch was the inspiration for Tank Lazier’s couch in Everyone Needs a Couch.

Because so many people wanted to hear the other side of Tanker’s sad story, the couch makes a second appearance along with protagonist Lorna Watkowski, Tanker’s ex-girlfriend, in Waste Management.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

The Power of Math and Pink

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 7th slot in the Table of Contents is “Jelly and the D-Machine”

I’ve always believed in multiple dimensions where countless versions of “Suzanne” likely exist and are living (perhaps) similar lives to mine.

I’ve also taken just enough physics to superficially understand the double-slit experiment, which is referenced in Jelly and the D-Machine.

I am a mathie–not a physicist–so forgive me if I get the science a bit wrong. I earned a Bachelor of Mathematics (BMath) degree in Operations Research (now called Mathematical Optimization) from the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, which, according to their website, “…has the largest concentration of mathematical and computer science talent in the world.”

pink-tieSo when people say, “Do the math,” in most cases, I can actually do it!

The symbol for the Mathematics Faculty is a Pink Tie. Cue the pink segue…

In Jelly and the D-Machine  I explore teen sexuality, multiple dimensions, and bullying. And even though bullying is one of those words that gets over-used to the point where it doesn’t have much weight, I believe that all teenagers have a profound and thorough understanding of bullying.

Always have.

Always will.

Unfortunately, I doubt that we as a collective society will ever be able to eliminate bullying. But I am pleased that in Canada we continue the dialogue, and have so many initiatives, including:

Pink Shirt Day

and

Kids Help Phone

to continue the struggle to if not eliminate bullying, at least lessen its power.

Rock on, PINK! You have the power to do the math and reduce bullying. That’s an amazing skill for a colour.

rubber-chickensFun Fact

For years I super-volunteered for my sons’ elementary school councils. One of the events I helped to plan was an annual Fun Fair.

And yes, we actually had a rubber-chicken target-toss game, and we re-used the wooden toss-board every year for the Fun Fair. We even kept a supply of rubber chickens on hand.

Seriously. Rubber chickens. I kid you not!

Lucky for our committee, the school allotted us a lockable closet where we stored all of the equipment for the fair from year to year. So if Austin from Jelly and the D-Machine  had been my son, he wouldn’t have access to the chicken-toss-board in my basement and who knows what would’ve become of him.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

How One Radioactive Monkey Found his Feet

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 6th slot in the Table of Contents is: “Hot Furball on a Cold Morning”

doorwaysissue6coverYears ago, I was scoping out Ralan.com in search of markets for my fiction when I stumbled across a call for submissions to the anthology:

Requiem for the Radioactive Monkeys.

The market didn’t pay much, but the maximum length was 500 words. I figured I could write a story in an hour about a radioactive monkey.

Bam! The first version of Hot Furball on a Cold Morning  flew into existence in record time.

Unfortunately, the editor, John Weagly, didn’t pick up my story.

The big problem with any themed anthology is that after the stories are purchased and the rejections go out, suddenly a glut of stories with similar themes run the magazine and anthology circuits. I couldn’t possible sell my radioactive monkey story right away! I’d have to sit on it for a while.

coldmorningA couple of years later, I took a workshop run by the incomparable Mort Castle at World Horror Convention in Toronto.

Wind time ahead some more, and Mort Castle assisted in founding a new horror magazine called Doorways.

I reworked the story, filling in some details I didn’t have room for with the original 500 word cap, and sold Hot Furball on a Cold Morning to Doorways.

Fun Fact

One of the other students in attendance at the Mort Castle workshop, Ken Lillie-Paetz illustrated my story. Didn’t he draw a fantastic sad little monkey?

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

“What Becomes a Legend Most” – Introduction by Sandra Kasturi

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

The “Introduction” for a book sets up the reader for the prose that follows. In this post, I thank Sandra Kasturi for writing the Introduction: “What Becomes a Legend Most”

I am honoured that Sandra Kasturi wrote the introduction What Becomes a Legend Most  for ELEMENTS.

sandra-as-ElvisSandra Kasturi is Co-Publisher at ChiZine Publications, AKA CZP. She’s an award winning poet, a short story writer, and an editor.

If all of those credentials aren’t enough, she’s also a friend.

Sandra and I met years ago, but I can’t recall exactly where or when. If held at gunpoint, I’d probably guess we met at Ad Astra, a convention in Toronto.

When my publisher at EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing requested a short list of people who might write the introduction, Sandra was the first person I emailed. She’s pretty much the first person I email whenever I have any complex questions about publishing.

As I mention in the Acknowledgements, she is a member of my girl-posse. If you’ve had the opportunity to read the final story “Soul-Hungry” from ELEMENTS  then you might have a greater appreciation of the status of such a designation.

Sandra is a force of nature. Her poems have been collected in several volumes including:

animal_bridegroom-COVERcome lateCome Late to the Love of Birds

and

The Animal Bridegroom with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

I cannot thank Sandra enough for her wisdom, advice, and friendship. Most of all, I am grateful that she has shared so many poignant and truthful words with the world.

More ways to connect with Sandra Kasturi:

Follow Sandra on Twitter.

Find Sandra on Facebook.

Read and/or review Sandra’s books on Goodreads.

Read her full biography at ChiZinePub.com.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

Courting Ice – Canadian Style

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 5th slot in the Table of Contents is: “Courting Ice”

I live in Canada and my writing can’t help but be affected by our seasons, particularly winter.

“Courting Ice” takes place in the fictional Daslak. When I wrote the story, I imagined Daslak  as a remote area of Newfoundland. I’ve never visited the province, but I’ve longed to go. Who wouldn’t when so much of the province is absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous?

Here’s a picture of Goose Cove that I downloaded from These things happen.

Newfoundland Iceberg

Nothing like the vista of rock-dominated landscape with a striking iceberg floating past the shoreline.

In the story, Faya is an ice courter. She uses her gift to coax icebergs to shore where the ice is carved into pieces that are used to preserve food.

This courting gift runs in Faya’s family. Her grandfather courted ice and her mother courted water.

Faya’s mother’s gift drew her to the sea. And as anyone who’s worked on the Atlantic in winter knows, the ocean can be a dangerous place to earn a living.

To an ice courter like Faya, all frozen water was uniquely magnificent, from the great bergs that floated past the cape to the thin skins on late autumn puddles. She adored her gift, for it allowed her a connection as splendid as the love she had once shared with her long dead mother. All her life the ice had proven pure and true, until the spring when she fell in love.

We Canadians consider it a national pastime to complain about winter, and I’ve done my fair share during this year’s particularly difficult winter in Ontario. But seriously, I can pretty much guarantee they’ve had it worse in Newfoundland.

Fun Fact

Newfoundland was the last province to join Canada on March 31, 1949 and on December 6, 2001 the Canadian Constitution was amended to change the official name of the province to Newfoundland and Labrador

As many of you know, I love hockey, and the best place to watch hockey is on Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) on the CBC. During the opening montage at the beginning of a HNIC broadcast, they play a clip from the late great Foster Hewitt. And when the clip was recorded, Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada, so he opens with:

Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland

.

Listen to the Foster Hewitt clip on YouTube.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

Storm Child – Putting a Fresh Face on a Timeless Myth

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 4th slot in the Table of Contents is: “Storm Child”

cicada jul aug cover miniIn the summer of 2000, AKA “2K”, I attended my first writers’ workshop, taught by Ann C. Crispin and held at DragonCon.

At the end of the workshop, we students formed a writers group, which we named the “DC2K” writers. Since then, we still critique, share market listings, and provide support for one another’s work.

One of our group challenges was to write a short story based on a myth or folk story.

I decided to research myths outside of the ones I was already familiar with, and found The Hero with an African Face, Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa  by Clyde W. Ford (Bantam, 2000) at the Kitchener Public Library.

One of the myths was a Rwandan folk tale, and I loved the way it flowed and the atmosphere of the setting.

But the challenge from DC2K was to re-tell the myth, so I decided to set the story in the United States, a few years after the emancipation of the slaves.

Storm Child  was originally published in Cicada. The magazine is gorgeous. They included 7 illustrations by Walter Mendoza for the story. I must admit, the first time I saw them, they took my breath away!

Fun Fact

The main character in Storm Child  is named Wanda.

I took some flack from my writers group about the name, mostly that they felt it didn’t quite fit with the character.

Hear me, writers-to-be: I stuck with my gut on the name. Because I’d based the story on a Rwandan tale, and I thought using the name Wanda was my way of tipping my hat to the origins of the story.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

March of the Forgotten – The Origins of Sebbee

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 3rd slot in the Table of Contents is: “March of the Forgotten”

Here’s the thing:

I spend at least half (if not more) of my writing time at Starbucks, because
(a) they allow me to linger as long as I like
(b) they have electrical outlets so I can plug in my laptop.

To do my part for the environment, I use travel mugs. (Why not save the ten cents?) One of my favourite mugs looks like this:

Sebbee Mug

So one day, while I was sitting in Starbucks trying to decide what to write about, I made up a story about my mug coming to life. Not a full-on Brave Little Toaster type of life, more like partial consciousness and mobility. Enough intelligence to be self-aware, and enough mobility to march in a circle as a form of entertainment.

In March of the Forgotten  lost objects march around the food court at the mall, in the hopes that their owners will notice and reclaim them. A high-tech lost-and-found.

Fun Fact

In the summer of 2004 I attended a short fiction writers’ workshop at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction in Lawrence, Kansas.

A bunch of the students used to make coffee runs to Starbucks, a place I’d previously NEVER bothered with because I thought they only sold coffee and I don’t drink coffee.

I’m sure, right now, you’re asking, What??

I know, I’m crazy, but I do love tea. (It’s probably a Canadian  thing.)

So I’m in Starbucks and I discover that they do sell other drinks like tea and frappuccinos. Oh, blessed is the strawberry frappuccino  especially with whipped cream topping.

My fellow students hooked me on Starbucks for life! And not only that, one of my pals had an awesome Starbucks mug, which miraculously didn’t leak  and kept my beverage warm for hours.

I bought the same mug. That mug was Sebbee’s predecessor!

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

“The Wind and the Sky” – Backstory

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 2nd slot in the Table of Contents is: “The Wind and the Sky”

neo-op five coverI wanted The Wind and the Sky  to read as a classic Science Fiction story.

So I created a space station, populated entirely with androids.

The station is originally built as a place to store the technological and scientific building blocks of Earth before a meteor hits the planet and destroys the ecosystem. The humans left on the surface build underground caves to keep the population alive until the surface is once again habitable.

Time passes. All the humans posted to the space station die off, leaving androids capable of self-replicating. They are charged with the task of protecting the Earth’s scientific treasures, and the long-dead humans programmed them to share the storehouse of wealth with the rebuilt human civilization once it’s deemed “ready”.

The androids consider themselves so superior that the humans on the surface are never deemed “ready.” The androids build in improvements with each successive generational upgrade. I named the various upgrades after elements in The Periodic Table.

In The Wind and the Sky  Polnine is a member of the 84th upgrade Polonium series of androids. His boss, Astfour (a member of the 85th Astatine series) is a typical corporate manager: big ego, no compassion, and always giving Polnine a hard time for paying more attention to his passions  than his job.

Polnine becomes so fascinated by the humans living on the surface that he decides to pay a visit to the surface. The story evolves as this technologically and scientifically superior android interacts with the hunter-gatherer humans on the surface who are scratching their way back to civilization.

Fun Fact

In an earlier draft of The Wind and the Sky  Polnine’s boss was Asttwo or “AST-2”. (Which in my mind, meant he was the second built of the Astatine series.) But when beta readers told me they thought it read as “AST-TWOW”, the dog with a speech impediment from The Jetsons. I changed his name immediately!

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

“Coolies” – The Story Behind the Story

Elements LJ sizeBelow, dear reader, please find bonus content for Suzanne’s book: ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.

This series of posts provides stories-behind-the-stories for each tale in ELEMENTS.

Sitting in the 1st slot in the Table of Contents is: “Coolies”

On Spec Coolies covCoolies  is the first story in ELEMENTS, and one of my personal favourites, probably because in it, Canada  is at war with the United States. Crazy, right? Why would the little guy take on their big neighbour to the south?

And here’s the kicker: we’re winning!

I wanted to explore the idea that our two countries would be so polarized on an issue that we would take up arms. In this case, the issue is the existence of stem cell factories where organs and other body parts are grown for surgical transplantation.

Near the Alberta/Montana border, we meet Marvin, a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Regiment who leads a coolies detail–soldiers responsible for harvesting organs in the battlefield.

Since our armed forces already make so many sacrifices for our country, I thought I’d push their sacrifice one level deeper. In the few minutes after their deaths, their bodies can be used to save their wounded comrades.

Fun Fact

Jack McD StarhawkBefore I finished writing Coolies  I read the first few pages aloud at Con*Stellation a convention in Huntsville, Alabama.

The amazing and talented Jack McDevitt was in the audience.

After we all finished our readings, Jack told me he loved the story and couldn’t wait to read the rest.

His enthusiasm gave me the drive to finish Coolies  and to not give up on submitting until I sold it to OnSpec.

Elements LJ sizeELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction  is available in Canada and the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.