Author: Bekki

…and then what happened?

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things about watching PBS was the part after the shows, where they said “funding was provided by X and Y company, and by viewers like you.”  There was something so darn cool about the fact that ordinary people could be part of shows like Reading Rainbow and Arthur.

That chance to be part of the magic, to make something creative happen, is what I like so much about Kickstarter. When you’re funding on a small scale, every pledge to back a project, even if it’s only a few dollars, matters. It’s exciting, too, holding your breath until the last minute, waiting to see if that project you backed is going to fund, or reach that crazy stretch goal you’re so hyped about. Kickstarter lets us all be patrons of the arts.

Enter Fireside Magazine. Once upon a time, during the “Golden Age” of the pulp magazines, a writer like Robert Silverberg could make a living on an average of 5 short stories a month. These days, pro markets pay 5 cents a word. That’s $200 for a typical short story of about 4,000 words.  Know anybody who can support themselves on $1000 a month, pre-taxes?  Yeah, me neither. *

Fireside is trying to change that. They pay 12.5 cents a word, or $500 for a 4,000 word story. At five published stories a month, that’s almost enough to live on. In order to make this happen, they’re running a Kickstarter, with a goal of $25,000. Right now, they’re only about 25% funded, with 17 days to go.

I want to see them make it.  I want to see a market, and an audience, that supports paying writers a livable wage.  So I’m offering to match donations made in the next 24 hours. I did this last year, with a $500 cap.  Together, we raised $922.

This year, I’m raising the cap to $625.  If we hit it, that’s $1250, or 10,000 words.  10,000 words funds 10 pieces of flash fiction, or 2-3 short stories.  10,000 words is almost enough to pay the writers for an entire issue of Fireside.

Let’s do this.

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Who are you, anyway?

I’m a writer, a lawyer, and a mom.  Not necessarily in that order.

When is this happening?

I’ll match all pledges from 2 pm EST on Friday, March 14 to 2pm EST on Saturday, March 15.

Why only 10,000 words?  You did just say you’re a lawyer.

Because it’s a nice, round number. And, without going into the economics of living in NYC with a kid and student loans, suffice it to say that this will eat up most of my discretionary income for the next few months.

What is Fireside?

It’s a magazine that publishes great storytelling and pays writers a living wage. Their stories aren’t confined to a single genre. The only criteria is that the story has to make the reader say “…and then what happened?”  Brian White, the cellar-dwelling pet of Chuck Wendig editor, has a great pitch for year 3 over on Wendig’s blog.

How does this work, exactly?

Easy.  Go to the Fireside Year 3 Kickstarter and make a pledge.  Then send out a Tweet using the hashtag #10000words and a link to this post.  Feel free to cc me @bekkiwrites or Fireside @FiresideFiction.  If you don’t use Twitter, post a comment here.**


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* Even the government agrees – the poverty line for a single person in 2014 is just shy of $12,000.

** You don’t have to post the amount you backed the project for, and I’ll match any pledge made during the 24 hour period, even if you don’t tweet or comment. But wouldn’t it be cool if we could get #10000words to trend?

Women Destroy Science Fiction (Space Opera Edition)

On By BekkiIn This is Feminism1 Comment

I grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy. The first adult novel my parents gave me was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong. I devoured the other Pern novels, then discovered Terry Pratchet, and Neil Gaiman, and Lois McMaster Bujold, and Mercedes Lackey, and Robert Heinlein, and Margaret Atwood and… You get the idea. The sci-fi/fantasy shelves are the first place I go in a bookstore. It’s the only genre where I find both comfort and challenge as a reader.

Which is why it’s always astounded me that I don’t write more in the genre. My stories and novels tend toward the contemporary rather than the imagined. I’ve been trying to rectify this, one short story at a time, on the theory that the best way be part of the community is to write in it.

Enter Lightspeed Magazine and the Women Destroy Science Fiction edition. I’ve followed some of the kerfluffel about women being harassed at cons, or being told they’re not geek enough, or their writing ruins entire genres. And while I haven’t experienced any of it, I think it’s high time this kind of nonsense stopped. As you can probably guess from the title, Lightspeed does too. They’re putting together a special edition of sci-fi written entirely by women, and they’re taking submissions from the slush pile to do it.

Awesome, I thought. I should submit something. Except that none of my stories are sci-fi.

Then, as sometimes happens, the first line of a story came to me:*

Sure, Rhyden was a backwater, but it was also home to Lady Evangelina Rhyssa, Ambassador-at-Large to the Galactic Council, three-time winner of the Andromeda Pageant, and certified sharp-shooter extraordinaire.

Suddenly, I had my protagonist, Cass O’Reilly. She’s scrappy, sarcastic, and the worst P.I. this side of Vega. For the first time, I understood what other authors meant when they talked about throwing their characters into bad situations for the sheet enjoyment of watching them battle their way out.

For $5 you can get yourself a copy of Women Destroy Science Fiction, as well as the companion destruction of horror and fantasy. And you never know, Cass just might end up in there.

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*For the record, I’m a firm believer that the only way to write, and write well, is to apply ass to chair. But there’s undeniably a certain magic to the process, and my personal muse seems to have a habit of dropping first lines into my head and letting me work out the rest of the story from there. Who says I can’t have it both ways?

Baby o’Clock

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

We got back from California almost two weeks ago now. Every time we go, it feels more and more like going home. Something about the hills rising up out of the earth, crumpled and creased and golden. The highways, wide and flat and sinuous. The ocean, beating against the sand.

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Going away was good for us. For me. I feel like I’m finally starting to settle into life with the baby. Sure, everybody said that life would change, but I didn’t think it would be that different. Call me naïve, but I thought I would finally have time to get things done. As anyone reading this who has had a kid knows, that didn’t happen.

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The reality is that her favorite place to nap is on me, or her dad. That even though she can’t speak, she has plenty of ways of getting across what she wants. And what she wants is to be right where I am.

So I blog with my phone while she’s nursing. I read books with one hand while walking around holding her with the other.  But mostly, I accept that the to do list is limited to one item per day.

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And some days, I’m even okay with that.

There’s No Such Thing As Gender Equality

On By BekkiIn This is FeminismLeave a comment

We dress our baby like a boy. It’s partly because the clothes were free, courtesy of her six-month old, male cousin. It’s partly because we like the clothes in the “boys”section better. (Monster suit, I’m looking at you!) But it’s mostly because, unless she’s in a dress or wearing neon pink (and sometimes not even then), people assume she’s a boy.

It’s not just other people. We do it too. When we put her in her first dress, for a party my mother in law had last weekend, I looked at my husband and said, “Wow, she looks like a girl.”

Babies are baby shaped. They don’t look male or female – they look like little balls of adorable. Any gender identification that we impose on babies comes from us. Including the default assumption that a baby is a boy until proven otherwise. This is at the root of our difficulties with gender, our need to dichotomize into girl/boy, male/female and all the baggage that goes along with that.

And there’s no way we can live in a world in which gender doesn’t come with a pre-packaged set of assumptions and norms, until we can let babies be babies. Without attaching a label.

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It seems that I’m not the only one thinking about gender norms and preconceptions today. Chuck Wendig has a great blog on the subject here, and Kat Howard’s thoughts are here.

New Year’s Wishes

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings1 Comment

I wish for you to be challenged, and that you rise to meet those challenges with determination and perseverance.  That you find within yourself the ability to do what you always thought was impossible.  That you learn things about yourself that surprise and delight you.

I wish for you to be lucky. The kind of luck that leaves dollar bills on the sidewalks and four-leaf clovers in your path. That sweeps the unexpected into your life where it is most needed.

And, as always, I wish that you love and are loved and find new loves.

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See also Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s Wishes.

And the lovely Ali Trotta’s.

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I’ll link to other wishes as I come across them.  If you have one, or know of one I’ve missed, drop me a line in the comments.