Living the Fictional Dream

The Sword & Sorceress market has opened again. Another anthology of sword and sorcery stories with strong female protagonists. I really love the idea of this anthology. I like fantasy, I especially like fantasy with strong female protagonists, and I enjoy a good action story (if it is well-written and has more than just action to sweeten the story).

This is one of those markets that it would be a dream to be included in. As such, I probably never will be, LOL! Seriously, this is a really tough market. I have submitted several stories to them in the past couple of years and gotten the form rejection every time. Not even good enough for a personal comment! Some of my writing group mates have submitted as well, and none of us have gotten a nibble. Competition at the professional level is killer.

Last year, while on vacation, my husband had me reading a series of short stories about two characters named Tarma and Kethry. These stories were some of the first works published by Mercedes Lackey, and I believe they first came to light in a S&S anthology or some other of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s publications. While reading them, I was really struck by the difference between publishing now and publishing back when these stories first came out (I think it was in the 1970s, if I remember correctly, but I’m lazy and not looking it up, so don’t hold me to that!).

In these stories, Tarma is a female warrier. All of her tribe is slaughtered by her, so she swears herself to the warrier goddess, takes a vow of chastity, and devotes herself to getting vengeance for her tribe. After that is complete, she devotes herself to helping women in trouble who have no one else to save them.

By Tarma’s side is Kethry, a sorceress of astonishing power who has a magic sword that can lead them to other women who are in trouble. The pair forge a solid and real friendship and spend their lives saving the world together — both on their own and as part of a mercenary fighting garrison. Kethry’s children help Tarma re-start her lost tribe among the horse people, and in their later years they run a school to train both boys and girls in the art of fighting and magic.

If you have some time to kill, I would recommend these stories. I found them very interesting, and over time I really grew to love the characters.

However, it’s that “over time” part that really marks the difference between then and now in the publishing world. Nowadays, there is no time for building an audience, especially in the short fiction market (though, I think that is also more and more true for the novel market, as well). A short fiction author is lucky if readers don’t give up on their stories within the first few paragraphs. As a reader myself, even I’ve been guilty of this. If a flash piece doesn’t grab me at least a little bit at the beginning, I’ve been known to bail on it, even if it was less than 1,000 words. I just don’t have enough time for reading something I’m not that into.

But back then, you had the luxury of time. If you were a good writer, your stuff would get published and your audience was allowed to grow. When I first started reading the Tarma and Kethry stories, I remember thinking, this is an interesting premise, but if this story were submitted to a market today, it would get rejected. There isn’t enough punch at the beginning, not enough of a hook. To really get invested in the characters, I had to read the first two or three short stories in the anthology — back when they were first published, these stories weren’t even in an anthology all together, so you only had one at a time to read.

So, as I ponder if I have any ideas worth working on and submitted to the S&S market this year, I think back to Tarma and Kethry and realize how much things have changed. Its a faster and more competitive world out there for writers, and snagging readers is more difficult, so we have to be at our best all the time, and even then our stories may not get accepted.

However, I don’t want to end this post on a down note. I really want people to take away from this that I’m discouraged about writing or publishing, because I’m not. I just try to approach it with a realistic mind set and no false hopes.

If I never become rich and famous in this game, that’s fine. I mean, I wouldn’t turn down rich and famous, but I don’t expect it. I just want to write, and I know that’s something I’ll be doing forever, no matter how many stories I have published (or don’t have published).