"The Unbeing of One-Leela" is available online

My story, The Unbeing of Once-Leela, part of Sybil's Garage 7, is now available free online.

Here's the link.

"Where it Ends" up at Strange Horizons

My India-based story, "Where it Ends", is up at Strange Horizons.

Here's the link.

Strange Horizons is an SFWA pro market, and a venue where many of my favorite authors get published regularly. Great stories, too. This is one of the first speculative markets I saw, and one of the reasons I started thinking I should try to write speculative fiction; I had not thought back then that I would ever manage to get published here.

Further, this is my third SFWA pro sale, and hence a landmark for me.

"What Lies Dormant" published in Warrior Wisewoman 3

My story, What Lies Dormant, is part of Norilana Book's anthology, Warrior Wisewoman 3. The website for the anthology is here.

The Warrior Wisewoman series are an annual anthology series of science fiction featuring powerful and remarkable women.

The review of issue 3 at Publisher's Weekly says: "The overall vibe is thought-provoking without being preachy, and easily accessible for even casual, apolitical readers." It even mentions my story as "Swapna Kishore's introspective "What Lies Dormant" looks at an India of the future" :-)

You can buy the anthology at Amazon and B&N; the links are available here.

Perhaps this is Kushi's Story is up at Fantasy

Just a quick update to say my story, Perhaps this is Kushi's Story, is up at Fantasy magazine.

Fantasy Magazine is a great venue with excellent stories and articles. I've always enjoyed reading the stories they publish. I'm in superb company again, and I'm thrilled.

"The Unbeing of Once-Leela" published in Sybil's Garage #7

My story, The Unbeing of Once-Leela, is part of Sybil's Garage 7, where it shares the TOC with some weird and interesting stuff. The issue can be bought at Amazon and B&N, and there is also an e-pub version (all details at the Sybil's Garage 7 page).

So, what have I been up to these (omigod!) eight months since the last blog post? Mostly thrashing in an unfocused way between stuff that had to be done, stuff I wanted to do but was not getting time for, and stuff that fell somewhere in between. There were just too many things I was trying to balance while hoping to retain my sanity.

I've been writing whenever I can, of course. A lot of that writing has gone into updating my website, which now has a number of pages on dementia and caregiving, including the usually not available perspective, the viewpoint of an Indian caregiver of a dementia patient.

And yes, I've been doing speculative fiction, too, but nowhere near as often as I want to. Writing fiction is fun at times, and not at others, and never easy (nowhere as easy as reading it is). But I do have a few more stories out there, and hopefully I'll have more updates to post.

Meanwhile, I must go pamper my muse with (what else) dark chocolate, because my kitty of stories-ready-to-send-out is almost empty, partly because of some acceptances, and partly because I realized that some of the stories I was sending out were not good enough. A few stories still in the circuit are getting me personal rejects from pro and semi-pro markets, but getting a dozen "encouraging" rejects is still not a sale :(

Writing, but not through NaNoWriMo

In a rather painful decision I took a few days ago, I decided to drop out of this year's NaNoWriMo.

I had not been able to prepare mentally for NaNoWriMo before November, and though I had some exciting YA ideas, I had not done any research. That, by itself, was no deterrent; in the past years I have successfully completed the 50K thrice, and two of these three times was with no prior work. And what's more, I am reasonably satisfied with what I did on all those three occasions. But this year was different. I started one story; it morphed beyond recognition. I continued, and it morphed again. Alongside this, life threw challenges that were just too tough.

And so, rather than ending the month with 50K of an unusable ever-shifting story, I decided to drop out and re-focus on short stories. I have managed drafting a few short stories since then, and polished a few more, and this activity is easier to fit into my current life situation.

My mother's been unwell for two months now. The unfortunate part this time is that she is just not responding to medication. The last few weeks have seen a number of emergency home visits by doctors and nurses, causing me to crystallize my personal priorities. Spending time holding her hand and talking to her is very important to me, given that she still responds to emotions. Introspecting and understanding the nature of life and happiness is important. Working to support the cause of dementia awareness and caregiver community support is important.

And writing is important..but writing a novel is not.

On the plus side as far as my writing goes, I have bumped up my submissions to eight. I also managed a few first drafts, and subbed three stories to various crit groups. A few of the subs are currently in round 2 and I have my fingers crossed about them.

On the not-so-plus side, one submission earlier accepted by Arkham Tales reverted to me because the zine closed...sigh! I promptly subbed off the story to another zine, but frankly, this is not quite the way I want to bump up my submission stats.

November's almost there

When November is around the corner, can madness be far behind?

So here I am, with no plot, no muse, no dark chocolate, but determined to participate in NaNoWriMo. I've done it thrice before, won all times (at the cost of my sanity, and lots of chocolates), and I can tell you it's addictive.

See ya there, folks!