Kristin Janz

Tag: Canada

  • “The Water Tower” in Polar Borealis

    It’s been over a year since I’ve had a new story published, so I’m excited to announce that you can now read “The Water Tower” in the latest issue of Polar Borealis.

    Polar Borealis is a free online magazine that publishes Canadian speculative fiction (in this case, mostly science fiction, with some fantasy and horror). R. Graeme Cameron is the editor and publisher. He’s especially committed to promoting the work of beginning authors, and reserves at least three story slots per issue for previously unpublished writers. So, if this describes you, you might want to consider sending him a story! (You do have to be Canadian, though; or at least a Canadian resident.)

    Fortunately for me, he doesn’t only publish beginning writers. While I’m certainly not established or anything, “The Water Tower” is my 21st story publication. And–more good news!–Graeme just accepted another story of mine: “Portrait of an Aging Woman” will appear in the very next issue, scheduled for sometime this summer.

    I think it’s wonderful to see more and more authors responding to Things They Want to See More Of by starting their own magazines. Graeme started Polar Borealis because there weren’t enough paying markets in Canada where beginning authors had a good chance of seeing their work published. Getting into the established magazines is very competitive (in Canada or anywhere else). In the same way, Donald and I started Mysterion because we wished there was more of a market for speculative fiction that took Christianity seriously as a significant theme without falling into the usual stereotypes. Editing and publishing a magazine is a tremendous amount of work, and not something that every author has either the time or financial resources to manage. But if you can do it, it’s incredibly rewarding!

  • Imaginarium 2012

    I finally had a chance to read the other stories in the Imaginarium 2012 anthology, the one that reprinted my story “The Kiss of the Blood-Red Pomegranate” from Aoife’s Kiss.  There are a lot of great stories in here!  I think my favorite was Madeline Ashby’s “The Education of Junior Number 12”, about androids who fall in love with humans (although that simple description fails to convey the wonderful characterizations, and the thoughtful portrayal of the sort of effect this might have on human relationships).

    I also loved Geoffrey W. Cole’s “On the Many Uses of Cedar”, a story reminiscent of Groundhog Day in which the reader’s sense of who the villain is shifts from the easy assumption implied by the opening; Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s “Laikas 1”, about a woman inexplicably followed by a growing pack of feral dogs; Gemma Files’s “Signal to Noise”, about an ex-CIA agent who seems to be sending messages to his former boss from beyond the grave; Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “A Puddle of Blood”, a very unusual vampire romance; Derek Kunsken’s “To Live and Die in Gibbontown”, with its intelligent macaques, bonobos, and gibbons in an apparently post-human world; and Ada Hoffmann’s creepy “Centipede Girl”.

    Imaginarium also includes poetry, and while I don’t know poetry well enough to feel I can speak intelligently about it, I especially liked Peter Chiykowski’s “The Cinder Girl” and Carolyn Clink’s “10 Things to Know About Staplers” (although I’m not sure the latter is actually a poem; I’m not sure what to call it, really).

    Imaginarium 2012 is the first installment in what is expected to be an annual anthology of the best Canadian speculative fiction and poetry (“speculative” being an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, and horror).  For those of you who, like me, grew up in Canada, don’t worry:   it isn’t all slow, meditative work about the bleakness of the vast Canadian landscape.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  There are stories in the anthology set in the Canadian wilderness, while others take place in South America, Africa, Europe, or the Middle East.  According to the anthology editors, Canadian speculative fiction simply means “speculative fiction written by Canadians”; if there was any other measure of “Canadian-ness” used to select stories, I couldn’t see evidence of it here.

    Imaginarium is still available, either directly from the publisher, or from any of the major online retailers.

  • Why did I just waste my time on that?

    I have a hotmail address that I got when I still lived in Vancouver, so when I sign out, it drops me off at msn.ca. Once I get there, they always have links that I can click on and waste more time. Cause, y’know, I don’t waste enough time already. I always know that the article I’m clicking to read will not enrich my life in any significant way, and yet….

    Like the latest. Just in case you Americans thought that the heartland of your own nation was unique in its love for the World’s Biggest Things.

    Canada may not have the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. But no Canadian could possibly be jealous of their neighbors to the south, after catching a glimpse of the World’s Largest Perogie.

    I was strangely disturbed to find that, despite being the 2nd smallest province, Nova Scotia (where I grew up) has two of the eleven Big Things, including the large statue of Glooscap near where my parents live. That’s the way we Canadians do it, of course. If we want to excel, we pick some area where there isn’t a lot of competition. Big statues of Glooscap. Curling.

    I’ve also seen the World’s Largest Canada Goose statue. And I may have seen the World’s Biggest Lobster, though I’m not sure; I might be confusing it with the theme park (also in New Brunswick) with the big lobster slide (I was only 7 when we went there). Or maybe they’re the same place, part of one big lobster-themed tourist destination?

    Oddly, no mention at all of the World’s Biggest Hoe.