Welcome to my LiveJournal. I'm a science fiction writer with a growing collection of published short stories, and my collection Unwelcome Bodies is currently available from Apex Publications. It includes, among other stories, "Captive Girl," which was a 2007 Nebula finalist and which made the 2007 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards short list. I started this journal to have a place to talk about writing and the writing life, although you'll probably notice various digressions into belly dance and politics.

Please note that anonymous comments that aren't signed will be deleted.

My 100 word zombie story "'Til Death Do Us Part" is in the premiere issue of Shock Totem, which is now available to purchase here: http://www.shocktotem.com/shop.html

Or if you're going to NECON, you'll be getting a free copy with your con schwag.

My story "...That Has Such People in It" is in the latest issue of Apex Magazine:

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/

Please leave a little money in the tip jar on your way out if you want the magazine to keep publishing!

Apex Magazine is putting all the stories published online in 2008 into one lovely anthology, including my story "Organ Nell". If you're interested in ordering it, you can do so through this link:

http://www.apexbookstore.com/products/pelland-descended-from-darkness

Why that link? See my name in the URL? If you order it that way, I get a little piece of the action :)

This has been an interesting week for "Captive Girl" in the academic realm. First, I found out that the story was discussed for an entire class session in a science fiction lit course at NYU's summer school.

Then, I got my comp copy of Lavender Ink: Writing and Selling Lesbian Fiction, written by Fran Walker (et al) and featuring extensive excerpts from "Captive Girl" in Chapter 7: "Short Story Structure."

I find this all to be immensely cool :)

Back in January, a magazine contacted me about translating "Captive Girl" into yet another language. I replied that same day, and heard nothing back. After a month, I emailed them again to make sure they'd received my reply. Another month and a half passed, so I emailed them from my Hotmail account over the weekend, just in case my main address was being shunted to their spam filters. Still nothing.

I guess they changed their mind about wanting the story and don't want to actually come right out and say so.

ETA: Nope, an astute commenter remembered which magazine I was talking about (despite me not naming it here) and discovered that the story was published back in February. I can take not being paid and getting my comp copy yet, but would it have killed them to email me to at the very least say, "Thanks!"

"Writing Ugly"

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/blog/2009/02/jennifer-pelland-writing-ugly/

It's all about the joys of writing, well, the stuff I write :)

The cover:



The TOC:



Astute readers will notice that yes, I am the only woman in the TOC.

(Also, the TOC is off by about 4 pages.)

Anyhow, I am very excited, because this is the biggest publication I've ever been a part of. Once it's released, I should be able to walk into any major bookstore, head to the SF section, and expect to find it there :)

My short story "Organ Nell" is in the current issue of Apex Magazine:

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/

And while you're there, why not read the other stories in the issue as well?

I just finished going over the PDF proof of "Minya's Astral Angels" for The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, and man, I still cannot believe that they bought that story. It is by far the weirdest thing I've ever written. Yes, even weirder than "Clone Barbecue." "Minya" is what would happen if Rudy Rucker and Jim Kelly went to the space opera together and begat a mutant love child in the upper balcony between acts.

If I get a reading slot at Arisia, I think I'll see how it sounds out loud.

We've updated the Transcriptase site with the member stories that were in the last issue of Helix, including my own story, The Kennel Club. Stop by and have a read!

William Sanders reports in his newsgroup that the upcoming issue of Helix will be their last, and has been planned to be their last for quite some time now:

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.sanders&artnum=86316

I can vouch for the fact that they'd made these plans months before the kerfuffle.* In fact, knowing that made it more difficult for me to decide how to respond to the aforementioned kerfuffle. Saying that I'd never submit to them again would have been a hollow threat, because I knew that I'd never have another chance to send them a story anyway. And I wasn't sure that a boycott would have any effect on a magazine that was on its last two issues.

But there you have it. The news is out, and I will gladly vouch for them when they say that the kerfuffle didn't have anything to do with them closing their doors.

(*I learned about it either at the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008 -- they accepted my last story on 1/31/08, and I'd already known the news for at least a few weeks by that point.)

"Love’em and Leave’em - Confessions of a Serial Short Story Writer" -- in which I describe the joys of being able to play with an idea for a couple thousand words before leaving it for a younger, prettier idea.

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/2008/08/jennifer-pelland-1-loveem-and-leaveem-confessions-of-a-serial-short-story-writer/

As a response to the Helix controversy, a group of us who've been published by the magazine have come together to create Transcriptase, an archive of our Helix-published work for people to visit as an alternative to reading it at Helix. The current roster of authors is:

Elizabeth Barrette
Beth Bernobich
Maya Bohnhoff
Eugie Foster
Sara Genge
Samantha Henderson
Janis Ian
N.K. Jemisin
Vylar Kaftan
Ann Leckie
Yoon Ha Lee
Margaret Ronald
Jennifer Pelland
Vaughan Stanger
Rachel Swirsky

Massive kudos to vylar_kaftan for bringing us together, and to eugie for creating the site and doing the lion's share of the heavy lifting, plus nkjepiphany for doing so much work on the site.

http://www.broaduniverse.org/broadsheet.html

"Leave the Vomit In, or, Learning to Trust Your Voice."

Yes, mentions, plural :) Both "Mercytanks" and "The Last Stand of the Elephant Man" got them. Huzzah! They mark my first appearance in the SF honorable mentions section.

And I also got a mention in the intro...kinda:

"...and [Magazine that shall not be named] had another strong year, publishing good work by Robert Reed, John Barnes, Jennifer Pellard..."

*sigh*

Thankfully, if you Google "Jennifer Pellard" the top hit is an LJ entry by me bitching about how people sometimes misspell my name that way.

Congrats to everyone else in the honorable mentions, and special congrats to current and former members of my writing group Yoon Ha Lee and Margaret Ronald

Posting this for fellow VP alum Scott Andrews (because really, why else would I know about a fantasy magazine?):

I've started a new online fantasy magazine called _Beneath Ceaseless
Skies_, specializing in literary adventure fantasy--character-driven
stories in secondary worlds. Our website is now online at
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com . Feel free to drop by and read
about the magazine, check out our submissions guidelines, browse our
online forums, or log onto the forums and post any comments or
suggestions you might have.

Please feel free to forward this URL around to anyone who know who might
be interested, or to post it on blogs or anywhere else. We're paying
SFWA pro rate, and we open for public submissions Aug. 1.

The latest issue of Helix has gone live, and it includes my goofy sex story "The Kennel Club." If you liked "Snow Day," you'll probably like "The Kennel Club." Warning: the story contains no redeeming social value whatsoever.

And remember, free online fiction isn't free. If you want the authors in this issue to be paid, please use the shiny yellow "donate" button to toss us a couple of bucks on your way out the door. Thanks!

"Captive Girl" will be reprinted in the Nebula Awards Showcase 2009 anthology. Here's the announcement:

http://ellen-datlow.livejournal.com/89126.html

"Captive Girl" was recently published in an Israeli magazine, and I just got my copy today. I can't read a word of Hebrew, but the stories each had an illustration, so I was able to find mine pretty easily. And you know how authors are when it comes to story art -- my initial reaction was "But Alice doesn't have hair!"* Then I turned to the bio to see if I could recognize any of the words in it. My URL was there in Latin letters, and it was spelled correctly, and the title of my book was still in English...well, something much like the title of my book, anyway. Rather than blocking and copying it, they retyped it and changed it to "Unwanted Bodies."

But hey, it's a sale that didn't require any work on my part!

(* Just as my initial reaction to the most excellent Apex issue 8 cover art was "But Blood Baby doesn't have any teeth!")

http://gumboeditor.livejournal.com/2284.html

There's a couple of good package deals available for folks who want a copy of the latest issue of Electric Velocipede, which includes my story "Sashenka Redux."