L.A. Little's Blog

This isn’t the sort of thing I usually post here, but two Saturdays ago I saw a concert so great I had to write about it as soon as I got home. I sent it[image error] to Alt Daily Sunday morning and they published it straight away. I was a music journalist for quite a few years in the 90s and into the 2000s and when this got a fair amount of buzz and kind words I have to say I was both flattered and thrilled to see that these skills hadn’t left me during my long layoff.

Please check it out here at Alt Daily! I do wish more of Grace Garvin’s terrific photos had mad it into the article so I’m adding a few of my favorites below.

 

 

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It’s time to kick this year’s anthologies into high gear! Honestly I’m usually a lot closer to done by this stage of the game but it’s been a remarkably [image error]busy year for me, in some very good ways. Some of you may know that I have a pretty full life in that I have a pretty demanding career and another business in which I am an owner. Both have been going gangbusters this year and it has really kept my calendar full.

That said, I’ve been accepting subs on a sort of casual basis and will now be pressing to get the rest in by November 1, 2017 and releasing both books just in time for Christmas – at least that’s the plan!

We need 15-20 stories for this year’s Outliers of Speculative Fiction check out the Outliers tab for full info on this one. It’s been a pretty great book the last two years. We’ve very well known and truly excellent authors like Cat Rambo and Alex Shvartsman featured in the books and of course a couple of dozen other authors at various stages in their careers who are just wonderful and whose stories cover the gamut of f/sf/h. It’s gotten some great reviews and they were well deserved, if I may say so.

For The Uncanny Valley, pretty much everything is the same in terms of how it works. The difference is that, while OSF is as broad and wild as possible, for The Uncanny Valley I’m looking for a more narrow range of stories. I’m looking for stories that deal with “the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it”. In the uncanny valley the robot or AI is neither so far from human as to be am appliance nor so near as to fool the human. It’s just other enough to be clearly other and just human enough to be upsetting. Within that seemingly narrow defile, there is the whole universe of reasonable self-preservation, well rationalized bigotry, naked fear, and everything along that continuum. I’m looking for stories that truly explore not just the tech and it’s implications, but also otherness and the dark corners of human nature, where they hide behind legitimate concerns, and where they cause us to ignore legitimate threats. HBO’s Westworld and AMC’s Humans are certainly good examples of these themes but I want something original that brings a different take to the table!

Whether for Outliers or The Uncanny Valley, get those stories in! These are going to be two more terrific anthologies that highlight your work alongside some of the best new and most revolutionary established authors in genre fiction. Every submission will receive a thoughtful response so the worst you can do is get some well intentioned feedback!

~ Used in reference to the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the perso…

Source: New Anthology-The Uncanny Valley-Submit Now

~ Used in reference to the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it.

I’ve always been a fan of good android and robot stories and in particular I’ve always loved stories where the android wasn’t quite…right. Sure I loved the Laurel & Hardy-esque droids of star Wars as a kid but they didn’t give me the same thrill as Yul Brenner as the haywire bad guy in the original Westworld. When I later read Asimov’s robot novels I absolutely understood the skepticism and fear with which the most advanced models were met.

We are as animal as the robots are mechanical and we exist only because we are hardwired to fear and attack that which isn’t like us. Were that impulse not a part of our reptilian brain we would not have lasted as a species long enough to make a conscious effort to “evolve” beyond that defense mechanism. More accurately uncounted numbers of out forebears didn’t survive raiding outsiders and dangerous beasts and so their trusting and docile natures died out to a very large degree. As a result we are still cursed with our natural tendency to group one another into categories that are superficially “friend or foe” but really more “us or other”. The instinct that allowed us to survive the savanna before we were even mankind as we think of it has in some significant measure given us racism, nationalism, and Cowboys fans (all teams, not picking on Cowboys fans–even though they’re awful). See how easy and natural it is, even though we know it’s wrong? The very thing that allowed us to mature as a species may well end us one day.

With androids though, the instinct was often indulged in the past. It was, somewhat ironically, a “safe space” in which to give ourselves over to this basest instinct and even revel in it in films like the original Westworld, Alien, and 2001: A Space Odyssey (thought to be accurate HAL was an AI with a disturbingly human/not human mind).

The first time that I remember seeing this subtle indulgence of prejudice challenged was in Asimov’s The Caves of Steel in which the main character’s new, android partner creeps the bejeezus out of him. It makes him look small in away that’s almost pitiable, though he is reformed by the end of the book. ANother good run at this was actually Mr. Data in STTNG, but the issue there was that the show was already set up, due to its legacy, to defy our 20th Century prejudices and Mr. Data was written to sympathetically from the very first episode to ever truly be “uncanny”–an wonderful opportunity missed in my opinion and perfect hindsight.[image error]

With all of this in mind it should be no surprise that I am a HUGE fan of HBO’s take on Westworld. It is absolutely some of the best genre television since the very first season of The Walking Dead, easily surpassing the recent seasons of that show and Game of Thrones in terms of story, concept, and sheer ambition. However, even before Ed Harris put on the black hat, AMC had come out swinging with Humans, a series I’m very excited to see returning in the next few weeks. Though I have to give the uncanny, android crown to Westworld, what AMC has done with Humans with far fewer resources and significantly less starpower is quite remarkable. I was hooked from the very first episode and was happy to see a zombie/vampire/dystopia/apocalypse free sci-fi universe once again.[image error]

My hope, though I am a committed fan of both TWD & GOT is that we’re moving into a space in spec fiction that is as well done and, if not a little smarter, certainly more likely, almost certain, to be relevant in a future that many of us will live to see. To that end I’ll be making my own small contribution in the form of a new anthology (hopefully anthology series if it goes well) dealing specifically with that space where robots go from cute vacuums and friendly starship officers to entities that we can just barely spot as “other”, whose motivations and intentions we may not quite understand, who may test what we believe as well as what we’re made of.

These are the themes I’m looking for, the intersection of fearful prejudice and reasonable caution, understanding and misunderstanding, all the things that creating machines/beings so close to ourselves but inevitably unknowable on some level will generate. I would certainly recommend either of the shows I’ve referenced for anyone, not just writers, but I’m not looking for a knock-off or fan fiction. Hit me with your own idea, your own fear. The possibilities are as vast as human folly and human grace with everything in between because, ultimately, The Uncanny Valley is really all about us. Tat’s why Delores and Mia are such effective characters–they can fool us completely, passing as human, in one moment and creep the bejeezus out of us with their alien aspect in the next.

I’m accepting submissions effective immediately. I hoping to have enough stories to put out the anthology before the end of 2017. I don’t have a deadline yet, but don’t dawdle. I’ll definitely be taking submissions into the summer, but probably not too far into the fall as I’ll need to get the stories edited and the book put together. I can’t wait to see what comes of this. Please send submissions to AuthorLALittle(at)gmail(dot)com.

Hey everyone! It’s no secret that this blog has NOT gotten the attention it deserves the last couple of months. I could run down the list of excuses, suffice to say I’ve been crazy frickin’ busy! So here’s the rundown of what’s been missed:

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1. Outliers 2016 is out and it’s pretty great! There are 11 stories by 9 talented authors and me. Get it here! It includes great, fairly  well known authors like Alex Shvartsman , David Wright, Kelly Dwyer, and Tim Jeffrys as well as up and comers like Rebecca DeVendra and A.C. Macklin. There’s something here for every speculative fiction fan.This project was a bear, mostly because of the aforementioned frickin’ busy, but a lot of great authors submitted and put up with me being unusually slow to get things done. The stories range from horror to fantasy to sci-fi and they have a range of moods from adventurous to thoughtful to trippy and lots in between. Definitely check it out and support these talented, up and coming and established, authors.

2. I’m a partner in Brink Records and we’ve been getting our third and fourth releases out as we roll toward our second anniversary. The company has been expanding like mad this year. We’ve rolled my writing efforts in to the record company as a new publishing division which is doing really well. Outliers 2016 was the first release for that part of the company and we have several releases planned for 2017. It’s a weird mix of spec fiction, rock history and maybe a sports book or two thrown in. As with the music we’re looking for something special regardless of genre. We also dipped our toes into video production for the [image error]first time. The year included 3 music releases. The first was a single that went on to be our second most successful release to date. The second (cover at right) dropped on the same day as Outliers 2016 and is on track to be the most successful thing we’ve ever done. Check that out here! It’s also available on Spotify, Amazon, wherever. The third release ran behind and won’t actually hit the streets and web until late January, but the quality is woth the wait–a terrific pop artist from London called Latala. This is she. There was a huge concert that didn’t happen and another that did, both were big learning experiences. We began delving into other realms of media and expect to release some of that experimentation later this year. We edited our first video from someone else’s footage in May and that’s gone on to be pretty successful. I directed my first video which was a wild, weird, wonderful experience that I hope to repeat soon and often. We also filmed a concert for the first time and that’s being edited even now. And that’s just the stuff I remember off the top of my head!

3. Outliers 2017 opens for submissions on MARCH 1, 2017. I’m aiming once again to get it out for Halloween. That didn’t work out so great this year, but I’m going to give it another shot!

4. We’re starting a new anthology this year tentatively entitled The Uncanny Valley. As you probably guessed, it’s about androids and robots and that weird place where that aren’t so robotic as to be completely other, nor are they so human as to fool us. They’re just human enough to creep us out. That’s the Uncanny Valley and those are the stories I’m look for. Submissions open now and I hope to have enough good stories to put the book out by year end!

5. Submit stories to AuthorLALittle(at)gmail(dot)com!

6. Other than that I’m still at the day job, the record company has a lot on its plate for the coming year including delving into other media, and I plan to write, write, write!

Thanks for checking out the blog! Make 2017 your year!

Due to my getting a late start promoting the book this year I’ve only seen somewhere around 75% as many submissions as I’d like and there are a few story slots left in the anthology–probably 5 or 6.

For these reasons I’m giving it another month! Please submit as soon as you can as the release date remains October 31! Even if you don’t feel 100% ready, SUBMIT! I’m here to help you get through that last mile. Several authors who are fairly well established have worked closely with me and been quite pleased with the results. I’m here to help you make your story better or tell you if it’s awesome as is, but I can’t do wither until you SUBMIT!

If you are included this year you’ll be alongside such well known, respected, and widely published authors as Alex Shvartsman and Tim Jeffrys! It’s a great platform to support up and coming authors or to move a new career forward. Several of our authors from last year have seen significant advance sin their careers over the last year! This could be your shot!

Send your story, pasted in the body of your email, to AuthorLALittle(at)gmail(dot)com. No re-prints or multiple submissions please!

I can’t wait to read your story! Thank you!

 

 

 

 

I’m really happy to be able to tell you that the first stories for Outliers 2016 are “in the can”! The first is by David Wright of Canada and the second is from 2015 alum Tim Jeffreys! I have several more in the editing process and hope to make several more story announcements next week!

Outliers 2016 is still open for submissions!

We also have our cover artist from last time, Mark Fussell, coming back to wrap the book and warp reality!

And then there’s the new Facebook page! Check it out, like it, go to it for awesome content and updates starting Friday!

https://www.facebook.com/OutliersofSF/?view_public_for=249443118782769

Finally, I have a really big announcement coming up on Facebook Live this Friday at about 11:15 Eastern time! Like the new page and when I go live you’ll get the notification. If you miss it live but you’ve followed the page you’ll be able to view it later! I’m really excited about where we’re going with Outliers and that’s what the live stream is going to be about! Please follow the page and check me out Friday!

 

I’ll be doing a panel on publishing in the modern age at GetYourGeekCon at the Slover Library in Norfolk, Saturday at 1pm. This library is vast and amazing. It’s being recognized as one of the best designed and most advanced libraries in the country. They have everything from a green screen room to 3D printers for public use. The programming looks like a lot of fun too. Come talk to me and two other incredible authors, Kelly Dwyer (who is about to be a legend, just you wait), and Toi Thomas, a successful author and renowned publishing marketing guru. We’re on at 1pm on the 6th floor. We’ll be signing books after and I, as always, will be happy to chat until they throw me out of the place. If you are in the area and want to submit in person to the 2016 Outliers anthology you are welcome to do so! The whole day is going to be a blast so come on out and visit with us a while.

“Battle of the Bastards” GOT 6.9

Alrighty, I’m not usually one for this sort of Monday morning quarterbacking of my favorite shows, but I do read what other the luminaries, analysts, pseudo-intellectuals and dilettantes have to say and all with equal relish. They usually cover all the angles that need to be covered and some that shouldn’t. This time I think I have something that may different enough to be worth reading.

I have a couple of points, we’ll call them theories, about this episode and I think I’ll just jump right into this main one: Sansa Stark, previously the stupidest girl in Westeros, is about to make her bones as the most conniving and dangerous woman on any continent and she doesn’t need dragons to win the title.

How do I support that view? Sansa has become a master manipulator and unflinching pragmatist. We first knew her as a girl with a head full of romantic, simplistic, honestly selfish ideas who wept and pleaded and collapsed in the face of the real world around her. She was, in short, the classic damsel in distress and it was disgusting on various levels.

Joffrey first showed her what the real world looked like but she didn’t accept it. She clung to the idea that if she could get away from this awful person, who in her delusional mind was an aberration, she’d be safe and protected by her family because of their inherent righteousness. She was naïve. Cersei further tormented her, especially during the Battle of Blackwater and Tywin Lannister wed her to a person she thought a monster.

This was her first turning point. Amid all these glowing, beautiful Lannisters, only Tyrion, whom she found physically revolting, made any effort to treat her decently. Sansa was forced to confront the idea that the world was neither what it appeared nor what she expected. This idea of things defying expectations was further reinforced when the Hound, whom she had long feared, had the chance to do with her as he wished, but he had a change of heart and left her unmolested when he fled King’s Landing.

At this point Sansa was existing in a world she didn’t understand but somehow thought was unjust. Yet, like many abused people that sense of injustice was steadily eroded by the day to day reality that justice didn’t matter—survival did. So she could almost be forgiven for falling victim to the skeevy, silver-tongued charms of Littlefinger and seizing on Joffrey’s death to escape with him. More importantly her creepy-time with Baelish was essential to her getting through her thick skull that pretty doesn’t equal good.

To be fair to Sansa, for the bulk of her life she was raised with ideals of her parents. Ned Stark was so rigidly honorable, so stridently lawful as to incite seething resentment among bannerman like the Boltons, who had been loyal for centuries. Her mother on the other hand was committed to Sansa being the highborn, southern lady, and giving her all the skills and attitudes to walk in that world.

This was Catelyn living vicariously through her daughter, and doing her a tremendous injustice. Catelyn wanted for Sansa the life that should have been her own before she was shipped north to wed the dour second son of what is essentially a barbarian empire within the Seven Kingdoms. She traded silks for animal skins and summer wine for charred deer meat and she wanted better for Sansa.

Given who her parents were and the expectations of beauty and pure justice they drilled into her, she can almost be forgiven for being so slow to get a clue. She had to be hurt repeatedly to understand that getting hurt or hurting were the only options in this world. As Cersei once presciently observed to Oberyn Martel, “They hurt little girls everywhere.” This is not only a fact for Sansa but one of the main themes of GOT if you step back and look through the long lens. Coming to grips with that fact has been key to her evolution.

Ramsay Bolton was, of course the final straw in her conversion from naïve girl to dangerous woman. His abuse and the powerlessness she felt at his hands hardened Sansa once and for all and allowed her to overcome the training of her childhood and become a woman ready to thrive in this world, which she is now doing.

Many have wondered why Sansa would keep secret from Jon that the Knights of the Vale, their cousin’s army, one of the only forces still whole, was just down the road at Moat Cailin. The obvious answer was that this army was under the de facto command of Littlefinger and Sansa didn’t trust him.

While true, that answer is also wrong. Remember Sansa has spent the last several years of her life being led by men who failed horribly and abused by the men who beat her champions. She rejected Littlefinger’s help because it was not on her terms and because she thought she might be able to get the Blackfish to serve her directly by right of her lineage. When it became clear that the Blackfish was not coming and that Jon could not raise a large enough army she reached back to Littlefinger for lack of a better option, but she had a twist in mind.

Remember Sansa never reveals the presence of the Vale forces even after she summons them. Why not? Sansa repeatedly tells Jon that his army is too small yet he and his counselors insist they must strike. She is yet again watching powerlessly as one of the “good men” in her life races to an honorable but foolish doom that will deliver her to her death or unimaginable torment. Jon’s only answer is that he’ll protect her, to which Sansa replies, “No one can protect anyone.” But the subtext there is that she plans to protect herself. Sansa is about to seize power because she knows that’s the only chance for any sort of protection.

When they were trying to raise their army we saw tension between Sansa and Jon stemming from the murkiness of the chain of command between a male bastard and a female Stark. Ultimately Jon won that battle by virtue of his reputation as a great warrior who had also risen from the dead—that’s a tough billing to beat. Sansa has seen her options become more and more limited, but in “Battle of the Bastards” she saw a chance to shift the balance of power.

Sansa didn’t summon the Vale forces sooner because Littlefinger is dangerous and she still thought being a true Stark would allow her to lead. When she saw that she was not the leader and that Jon was going to get them killed she pulled her ace.

She didn’t tell Jon, and this is where my theory gets controversial, because she wanted to make sure his army was decimated to the point that she would ride into Winterfell at the head of a force, the Knights of the Vale, which even Jon couldn’t challenge. Sansa more or less plotted the murder of Jon’s allies and the Boltons and their allies so that she could take the North for herself. And she sacrificed her brother Rickon, whom she’d already written off as good as dead, to do it. That’s a real bastard.

Doubt me? Fair enough. But remember that Sansa has now spent years surrounded by the Lannisters, most notably Tywin, Tyrion, and Cersei, as well as Littlefinger, and Roose and Ramsay Bolton. These are the deepest game players in the series. Whatever else Sansa was at the beginning of the series, she was a sponge, always eager to learn the ways of the south, of the court, of power. She’s learned the game and she’s ready to play, and she’ll do what it takes to win because she knows what it means to lose.

Obviously this isn’t a play as deep as we might get from Littlefinger, who almost certainly planned the majority of what has happened throughout the series in Westeros before the first episode. This was almost as impressive though. She saw a fluid situation that could have gone all sorts of wrong for her and she not only salvaged it but eliminated her chief tormentor and de-clawed her chief rival on the fly. She did have to bring a dangerous element on the board to do it but Sansa, despite her faux incredulity, knows Littlefinger’s weakness and she’s betting she can exploit it.

Sansa’s entire sexual experience to date has been comprised of violence and utility (heir creation). She is thoroughly disabused of ideas of romance and glittery, flowery, soft-focused seeexxx! Sex is a burden or a tool for her now and although I doubt she’ll jump in the sack with Baelish anytime soon, I do think she’ll use the promise of it to manipulate him, to play on his one weakness—his creepy attraction for his conflated impression of Sansa and her mother.

To re-cap, Sansa is going to manipulate the cleverest man in Westeros (and possibly her nutty little cousin) in order to command a massive army, cement her seat on the throne of the north, unite the Northern, Vale, and Riverlands houses, and get revenge on her remaining tormentors, the Lannisters and as a bonus the Freys. All it required was murdering a few thousand of Jon’s loyal followers, playing Littlefinger like her harp, and letting her own brother be shot down like a dog. Beware of Sansa. She’s cold, calculating, and much, much smarter than we’ve been led to believe.

Outliers of Speculative Fiction 2016 is open for submissions. If you submitted before now, have no fear, I have it. I’ve been really busy with my other job (I’m head of A&R at Brink Records) but I’m all caught up now and ready to start reading and editing your wonderful stories.

Last year we saw some truly eye-opening fantasy, science fiction that challenged and delighted, but not a lot of horror, though Tim Jeffrys’ entry was fantastic and could be considered horror in the psychological sense. I’d love to see a story that makes me afraid to put my feet on the floor when I’m done reading–creepy, realistic, supernatural tales that make you hold your breath. I’m not interested in stories of slashers, torturers, unfaithful girlfriends getting a comeuppance, snuff porn, or anything else that is basically the author expressing their own violent tendencies. I want scary in the supernatural sense, not horrifying in the sense of  “oh shit, this creep has my email”. Realism within your imagined world is terrific but watch for the line where it goes from scary story to scary writer.

Naturally more wonderful F&SF are wanted and needed! If you submitted last year but didn’t make it through the editing process, submit again! I saw several stories late in the process last year that needed too much work to be ready in time to publish, but were captivating nonetheless. I’d love to have more time to work with those authors.

On that note–SUBMIT EARLY. Every story in the 2015 anthology received editing. Some were more of a proofread but several went through extensive re-writes and most were somewhere in between. This is time consuming so don’t wait until the last minute!

What’s the last minute? Well the deadline is August 31! I want to get it out for Halloween this year.

I have a couple of strong entries already. I can’t wait to see what else comes this way. 8,000 word max but make every word count! No minimum count as long as it grabs me and doesn’t let go. Please don’t use anyone else’s property/world for your story. Please DO share and re-blog this article.

Thanks! I can’t wait to see what’s rattling around in those fascinating brains and spilling onto the page.