Book Review - Crossed Genres: Year One

Note: This review was originally posted at Associated Content.

Crossed Genres magazine publishes science fiction and fantasy short stories with a twist. In advance of each month’s publication, they solicit stories that mesh science fiction or fantasy with another specific genre, like Western, horror, or dystopian. After publishing their first magazine on December 1, 2008, the editors of Crossed Genres have collected the best story from each of their first twelve months of existence and printed them as Crossed Genres: Year One (ISBN: 978-1449996949), which comes out on February 1, 2010.

Several of the stories in Crossed Genres: Year One are just one piece of a larger whole. “Cold” by Melissa S. Green is the first chapter from an unnamed novel in progress. Author C. L. Rossman’s “The Time of Tales” is a short story involving a mythical space-faring race about whom she has written three books. “Back to the Beginning” by Marilou Goodwin is a stand-alone story, but hints at a larger tale to be told about human mercenaries of a war-ridden Dallas, Texas.

More intriguing are often the entirely self-contained stories. Erika Tracy’s alternate history story, “The Bat and the Blitz,” tells a succinct tale of warlocks and a witch helping to defend England from Germany’s bombing runs. Though brief, this story features fantastic character development in just a few pages, and top-notch dialogue. In “Condiment Wars,” Jill Afzeliu’s contribution to the humor issue of Crossed Genres magazine, Ketchup and Mustard, along with a cast of other diner condiments, romp through a pun-filled war over dinner plate supremacy. Despite the puns, the dialogue is superb and the imagery fantastic.

Crossed Genres: Year One features three Seattle-area authors: Jeremy Zimmerman, Nathan Crowder, and Jennifer D. Munro. While I was already familiar with the work of the first two authors, I found Munro’s story from the anthropomorphism genre, “The Strangler’s Fig,” to be my favorite story of this anthology. Rich with descriptive detail and stunning prose, this tale is certain to catch a reader’s attention.

The first twelve genres and their stories collected in Crossed Genres: Year One are an eclectic mix of styles and authors, each with something to offer to sci-fi and fantasy fans. You’ll find a good mix of the two primary genres, so there will be a story you’re bound to like even if you’re strictly a sci-fi or fantasy fan. While every reader is certain to have a story or two that are not to their liking, the majority of these stories are strong and entertaining reads. Crossed Genres: Year One is available for order at www.crossedgenres.com after February 1, 2010.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I typically sit between Nathan Crowder and Jeremy Zimmerman at a bi-weekly writer’s group. Jeremy is my boyfriend, and I am the one who encouraged him to submit “A Crazy Kind of Love” to Crossed Genres magazine, which is reprinted in this anthology. However, the impetus to write a review of Crossed Genres: Year One was my own.)

Ugh!

So I've been going to a writer's group with Jeremy every couple of weeks, and actually getting bits of writing done. Mostly it's been blog posts and such, but I actually started writing a fiction story that I was planning to submit to an online magazine. Before we went to the writer's group last night, though, I was starting to doubt whether or not my writing would be good enough for this magazine, whether or not my story would fit, etc. Pretty much typical Dawn. :)

Got to the Wayward and discovered that the last half hour worth of stuff I wrote last week was GONE. ARGH! This section, too, had been REALLY fiddly to write, and though I wasn't entirely pleased with how it had come out, I thought that if I could edit it, it might be okay. Having to rewrite the whole section? No thanks! We'll see how I feel about it after the disappointment of losing half an hour's worth of work wears off, but right now, I'm thinking it's a sign that me + fiction = not meant to be.

But since I'm going to the writer's group regardless, and since I can't spend all of my time helping Jeremy with research and editing, I've gotta work on something. This ultimately meant that I spent a while staring at my Shop Etsy blog and being further disappointed. It seems like it had a great direction and got posted to frequently at first, but now it's just gone by the wayside. I like the idea of the features, but I hate doing them sometimes. I also like the idea of just posting themed items (like I did for all of October, and in the most recent post), but there are a million blogs out there that do just that.

So here's a poll for the folks that are familiar with that blog (or at least are willing to go take a peek at it): what would you like to see on the Shop Etsy blog? What would make you read it regularly? What would make it stand out from all of the other blogs that feature Etsy artists?

In other news, I am lacking any End of the Work Week Wisdom, as my work week was an odd one (I spent most of yesterday thinking it was Monday), and I have not heard anything relevant this week. Sad but true side effect of my lack of TV watching. :)

Ugh... I'm trying to figure out how to write the next Morgan story. The problem I've come across this time is that I don't really know how I can describe a combat (which lasted for all of one minute) in a way that makes it at least vaguely entertaining... I'd consider just skipping past it, but I'm not sure how to do that either... argh... any suggestions would be much appreciated! :)

Well, it's rather short, and definitely should be followed up by more stories, but it's here. So It Begins is the latest of the Morgan stories. Like I said yesterday, when I started working on this personal plotline, I thought I knew how it would turn out, and how I would actually like to see it turn out. Things don't seem to be going that way anymore, based on what I've heard from the Broken Sword STs so far. But at least now the thought process that took Morgan out of action in Broken Sword for nearly a month is written.

And if all else fails, I'll write the rest of the story the way I think it would have happened... :)

Well, the X-Men test says that I'm Jubilee. I suppose this would be more valuable to me if I actually knew who this character was. She wasn't in the movie, so I'm kinda clueless... :)

I went back and looked at my "to-do" list that I posted here... here's the update...

• Morgan story - nothing doing, here. The way that I anticipated the story going is absolutely nothing like the way the game is going. So I've written an introduction, that I may post, but the story probably won't get finished... :(
  
• Garou stories 1 through 3 - ummm... right, I was working on Garou stories? Oh, I did start on the first one. Spent about 15 minutes on it. Stopped writing, and started playing the Sims. Damn, there's the problem! :)
  
• Beyond stuff - not worrying about that any more, because that game ended.
  

So I'm down to 4 stories to work on... w00t! :)

Yup, after wasting the entire evening yesterday playing the Sims, it's time to put the dreaded to-do list on the webpage, so I can have more than just myself nagging me about what should get done.

In no particular order, mind you... ;)

• Another Morgan story. The nice thing about this one is that I can procrastinate it a bit. This story, even moreso than A Moment in Time, is going to be able actual game events, rather than just stuff that Morgan did at some indeterminate point in the past. As such, I have to wait on some information from the STs before I can write much more than the first page or two... most of which is already started! :)
  
• Garou story number 1. This one is going to be along the lines of Christian's story, in that it will be a Galliard telling a tale that they know. In Christian's case, it was first hand knowledge. In the new story, it will be a story that has been passed down for nearly 100 years. This is my safety valve, because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get all of the historical facts and figures straight. ;) Despite all of the research I've done, I can't find anything on the internet or in books about what I want to write about. As a side note, if anyone reading this knows anything about the "Baby Pavilion" at the 1904 World's Fair, E-mail me! From everything I've been able to determine thus far, it's a pretty obscure topic!
  
• Garou story number 2. The Old Man has been working on his background for Fury of the Forsaken, and it's based largely on a long-running Garou chronicle that the two of us played in. My character in that game led a VERY interesting life (in the way that "May you lead an interesting life" is a Chinese curse), and I've often thought about writing something about her. Seems like a good idea, now that I'm using her as an NPC Mentor to one of the characters in Fury...
  
• Garou story number 3. I'd also like to write something for the Fury of the Forsaken page. A while back, a bunch of us players wrote a whole bunch of stuff for the Broken Sword of Caine page, and Macke mentioned that it would be kewl to have something similar on the Fury page. Well, I'm an ST in Fury now, but that doesn't mean I can't write for the page! :) I'm looking for ideas for this one, at the moment, but it will probably end up being another Galliard-style story. Those seem to work very well as far as Garou fiction goes!
  
• Work on The Beyond, which is my currently active Changeling-esque chronicle. I have most of the groundwork laid, and I know where the game is going. I just need to work on creating that final destination. I have some time for this, as the destination is still a while down the road (IC and OOC), but it would be good to get started on it sooner rather than later!
  
• A Ravnos poem. An anonymous person wrote Clan Brujah for me to post on the Forgotten website. I had encouraged all of the players to do stuff like this a while back, whether it be poetry, song/movie quotes, or whatever, so that we could personalize the clan pages, making them more than just a place to list the active characters. Seeing as I'm the only Ravnos in that game, and the webmistress, I suppose leading by example would be a good thing to do... ;) Luckily, this should be fun and quick to get done!
  
• There is probably more to add here, but most of it has to do with work on chronicles that are only ideas at the moment, or potential backgrounds for characters that I may or may not eventually play. So in other words, even the to-do list isn't done!
  

Ugh...

Oh, and continuing in my trend of wishing people who don't read my webpage happy birthday, today's wishes go out to Timmy and Jessi. Hope you both have a good one! :)