Welcome to the homepage and (somewhat) serious blog of Christine Lucas, writer of historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction and their occasional blend-ins. Oh, and cat stories too.
She was born and raised in Athens (of the country of Greece). The English language found her when she was five years old via her mother with an English Lit background, and stayed with her ever since, insisting on daily sacrifices of poetry and prose. She grew up in a pre-Internet era and in a society where the aspiration of becoming a writer attracted many funny stares. Very much like telling people that you’re off to Hollywood to become a star. Yeah.
So a career in the military seemed like the sane thing to do. Well, not to Christine, but let’s not go there. Long, painful story.
Twenty years of service later, with a honorable discharge due to medical reasons (that ‘sane’ thing mentioned above) she decided to start typing the stories that played on inside her head (‘sane’, you said?). She even joined writing workshops and took writing lessons.
Hmm, cat stories, you say? Fantasy cat stories? Hon, you’ll never get published writing that sort of stuff.
She heard that comment, and variations of it, many times, from many people. Thankfully, there were editors out there who thought otherwise. Or, perhaps, editors with cats that thought otherwise. Including awesome editor Ellen Datlow, who chose Christine’s short story “Dominion” (from ASIM #37) to feature in her cat-themed anthology “Tails of Wonder and the Imagination” for Night Shade Books (out now – February 2010).
And Christine never regretted her choice to write fantasy, historical fiction and science fiction. Oh, and cat stories too.
And that was the sane thing to do.
My short story “And the Psychopomp Followed the Lyre“ has finally found a good home: Expanded Horizons, an e-zine I have worked with in the past and recently made the British Fantasy Awards Longlist, alongside Clarkesworld and Fantasy, to name just a couple of other nominees.
Dash, the editor, is a great person to work with, and I’m happy to be published with them again.
“Psychopomp,” a story that started as a Liberty Hall flash, went through several incarnations before ending in its current one. It deals with a god’s search for purpose in a world that has changed too much and has little use for gods anymore. Hermes, the Psychopomp, finds what was lost in the most unexpected place.
Also, it has cats. Duh. And scorned goddesses, and hell hounds, and a cranky old Charon.
And it’s my second story sale within a week. Hey, Universe, I could get used to that. *pokepokenudgenudge*
My (very) short story “Twist of Fate” (all 160 words of it) will appear tomorrow, May 4th, in Everyday Weirdness.
Heh. 
It’s been a while, so it feels really good to be published again.
Oh, and yes. There’s a cat in it. Duh.
Just saw this on the Aether Age Blog: Awesome title art from M.S. Corley. And there are more sketches here.
I can’t wait to see the rest.
(Coming soon to a bookstore near you from M-Brane SF and Hadley Rille Books).
“Tails of Wonder and Imagination” has received several favorable reviews since its release in late January 2010, and the awesome editor Ellen Datlow has been sending the anthology’s contributors emails notifying them of the reviews. Here are snippets from them:
From Library Journal:
“…the 40 stories in this collection focus on cats of all sizes and temperaments and their interactions with humans. Though some tales are not for the squeamish and not all have happy endings, others shine with brilliant wit or poignant melancholy.”
From Booklist Online:
“…Datlow brings horror, sf, and fantasy all into the volume on equal footing, making it likely that even genre readers who aren’t cat people will find something very much worth their while in it.”
From Publishers Weekly:
“Few things alarm the experienced reader more than the prospect of a science fiction, fantasy, or mystery book that involves—or worse, fetishizes—cats. This reprint anthology is the exception, an assortment of 40 stories by authors who are for the most part willing to take cats on their own ground.”
From Bookgasm:
“…Overall, TAILS OF WONDER AND IMAGINATION is a clever collection of cat stories, focused enough to appeal to the cat lover, but broad enough to be of interest to any science-fiction, fantasy or horror readers.”
From Realms of Fantasy, June 2010:
“… As anyone who shares a home with a cat can tell you, they’re complicated creatures. They are hiding one moment and purring at your feet the next. They’re soft and cuddly, but have sharp claws and fangs like needles. Much like cats themselves, the stories collected in Tails of Wonder and Imaginationare an unpredictable bunch. Beyond their consistently high quality, there’s no one theme uniting these stories beyond the presence of cats—or catlike beings—in one form or another. To be sure, there are more than just house cats lurking in these pages: manticores, ghosts, and more inhabit the pages therein, and not all of them are friendly.”
From Tangent Online:
“…Tails of Wonder and Imagination and its star-studded lineup will keep you happily occupied, with or without a purring kitty on your lap, for quite some time.”
Last but not least, I’d like to add the Happy Cat Rule for reading “Tails”, as Ellen blogged about it. Many readers (like me) would rather avoid stories where animals get hurt, so this guide can come very handy.
The longlist for the British Fantasy Awards 2010 has been announced. I’m not in them (yet-check again in the coming years, says the Muse /Mews), so I will do what any self-respecting cat would instead. And I don’t mean pee in the nominees’ slippers, although Interpurr has been notified and their own cats will take care of that on my behalf. 
So I’ll just brag about the people I know and made it in the longlist:
- Ellen Datlow, editor, for three anthologies (Poe, Nebula 2009, and Best Horror).
- Eric T. Reynolds, editor, for the Origins anthology.
- Aliette de Bodard, writer, for her short story “Golden Lilies.”
- Dash, editor, Expanded Horizons e-zine.
- Terry Martin, Editor, Murky Depths magazine.
Here’s to more of my writerly friends making it to the list next years! (And their cats, too).
The Table of Contents for The Aether Age anthology has been announced here.
And I’m glad to see some familiar names in it.
But Phrixos? That’s my cat’s name… That was SO weird, seeing that he too was included in the ToC. 
Over the past few months, I’ve received quite a few critiques of a certain type that first frustrated me and then got me thinking. And, just to be clear, this rant isn’t aimed at the critiquers; I’m not angry of them or anything. I’m just wondering how this reflects to the SF readership at large.
And let me explain further with specific examples, although paraphrased.
1. Bob, the Pyramid Builder
Comments from critters on historical fantasy:
“Those names are so weird. Why isn’t anyone named Bob or Mary?”
Or its variation:
“Netjerykhet is such a complex name. You should use nicknames so your readers won’t get confused.”
Nicknames? Seriously? And it’s not as if I give everyone in my stories railroad names like ‘Mentuhotep II Nebhepetre’. I try to keep the ancient names short, like Hapi. But when there’s an actual historical figure featuring in my story, a person who has been mentioned in historical texts, I can’t shorten their names to indulge certain readers.
Unless those readers are the majority. And this thought troubles me.
2. Who’s this guy again?
Moving away from the woes of writing historical fiction, but (probably) dealing with short attention span again, I have to wonder if it’s me or the critter. Snippets from a story (paraphrased):
“Mary’s sister had killed herself, unable to face the humiliation. Oh Jane, Mary thought, why did you leave me alone?”
3-4 paragraphs later:
“In Mary’s dream, Jane was there, her wrists slashed open.”
And here comes the critter’s comment:
“Who’s that Jane gal? Perhaps you could tell us more about their relationship and how she died?”
Head, meet desk.
If this was one isolated incident, I’d just brush it off. Gods knows I’ve goofed aplenty in my own crits. Sometimes, real world issues interfere, kids cry, cats complain, colds mess up your head and you cannot be 100% there. In a similar way, if there was a consensus of comments pointing to something unclear, I’d go back and clarify.
But no. There’s always a random comment from certain people at random parts of the story that indicates to me that they missed my not-so-subtle hints. Do I really need to spell it out for them?
“Jane was Mary’s sister who cut her wrists to kill herself.”
This is not how I want to write. But it left me wondering how this reflects to readers in general, and not just critters.
3. But what does Bob feel now?
I blame this on how-to-write books.
It’s the middle of a fight scene against dragons (or Cthulhu, or the Antichrist, or Sauron or any other big bad Evil Guy). Bob has trembling knees, almost drops his sword and thinks he should have stayed in bed that day. Or something along these lines.
Gee, I wonder what he may be feeling.
Do I really have to spell it out? Bob was scared/terrified/whatever?
And then there’s its evil twin: What is Bob thinking?
In the middle of a dragon fight scene? During the adrenaline rush and its “Fight or Flight” effect? Newsflash: sometimes, people don’t think. They’re just trying to avoid getting barbequed. They don’t have the time to calculate the pros and cons of hiding under that wagon or inside that well or in that cave. (Yes, someone actually suggest I should do that). There’s a fraking dragon after them, for catnip’s sake.
I don’t blame only how-to-write books. I also blame action movies with their slow motion scenes, in which the hero can eat breakfast, boink his girlfriend and have a smoke in the duration of a single kick/shot. Yeah. Sorry, fight scenes in fiction rarely work this way.
Again, the above rant does not apply in places I’ve failed to display my characters’ emotional response. Those become apparent very quickly, and there’s generally a critter agreement on those. Moreover, if something is lacking, at some level I already know it and it takes just one comment to identify it. This rant is aimed at those instances where critters seem to wake up at random intervals, post a random comment to show they’re still reading. Much like what some of us did during classes back in high school or university.
But it still leaves me baffled.
So is this a sign of the times, an indication of reduced attention span of modern readers, or should I just find myself new critters?
The Aether Age Anthology, forthcoming in Summer 2010 from m-brane sf and Hadley Rille Books, is a collection of short stories set in a shared world based on alternate history. In short, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks evolved faster to space-faring nations.
Namely, a world after my own heart.
So I was ecstatic when I got the good news: two of my stories, “Orion’s Dawn” and “Heart of Carnelian” will both be included in the anthology. And this makes me happy as a purring kitten.
“Orion’s Dawn” was the first I wrote, during NaNo 2009 no less, and in some way the easiest of the two. Probably because it popped up complete in my head during a sleepless night when the Mews (and my Muse) just wouldn’t shut up and get to sleep. After the first draft, my awesome critters in OWW start hammering me: my heroine needed personality, conflict, that fight scene needed, well, some actual fighting, and oh, by the way, no, you cannot haz Mars. Or any other Roman/Latin name. And what will I call Cydonia? (Answer: I still have no idea. I just left it as that).
Que a couple of weeks of headdesking followed by research followed by even more headdesking that ended with a very long weekend and painful, line-by-line editing to address the issues. And, lo and behold, I was done three days before the deadline.
Only not.
While my Muse (and the Mews, I’m sure) were ROFLing, I discovered that the deadline had been extended and that the editors were now accepting multiple submissions, with the possibility of two stories from the same author getting accepted and published. The Muse, of course, had to hit me with another story idea; an incomplete one. As if I was going to be *that* lucky a second time. Then “Heart of Carnelian” took shape during a Liberty Hall Flash Challenge, under the working title “The Old Lion”, and within the next couple of weeks it grew from under 1000 words to over 3K.
And then I gave up.
On the last day before the new deadline, I was without an ending. On the last twelve hours, the Muse came back and brought the ending. (I can’t possibly type that fast to add another 1000 *good* words, can I? I can’t. Or perhaps I can?) Unfortunately, a bad cold came along with my wayward (and whimsical) Muse, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open to gaze at the PC screen, let alone type. So, one day after the deadline, somewhat disappointed, I check the Aether Age blog for updates. And lo and behold, authors with stories half-finished could request an extension. Feeling really squirrelly at this point, I emailed the editors and got my extension.
After a typing marathon, during which the Mews displayed their annoyance at my missplaced priorites (noms and litterboxes come before writing, therefore pee on both your couches), I finished the first draft and sent it off to my awesome critters at my personal group in Critique Circle. I cracked the whips, bullied and purred, and they offered their invaluable feedback. So I wrapped things up and submitted that as well. Had I been given more time, perhaps I would have made more changes. It might have resulted to a stronger story. Or perhaps not.
But this taught me two things:
- Not to give up on stories that I know they have potential.
- How much two annoyed tomcats can spray against the headboard of my bed. Oh the fun. Next time I’m on a submission deadline, they’ll be wearing diapers.
(Cover art by M. S. Corley)
“Tails of Wonder and Imagination” is a cat-themed anthology put together by multi-award winner editor Ellen Datlow. It includes stories from Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Tanith Lee, Charles de Lint, to name just a few of the contributors.
And if you scroll down the Table of Contents, you’ll see little old me: Dominion – Christine Lucas.
Available now from Amazon.
And one of the reviews even mentions me by name.
