One Year of Penumbra

by Dianna L. Gunn

When I emailed Celina Summers to ask about an internship with Penumbra last September, I didn't expect a response. When she invited me to join the Musa team, I expected six months of reading submissions then be sent on my way.

My expectations couldn't have been more wrong. At the end of October I was assigned to work with a team of interns on creating the third issue of Penumbra. My duties included editing and interviewing Homer Eon Flint's granddaughter and Musa author Vella Munn. I had great fun working with the other interns—and I am not a fan of group projects—and was thrilled with our December issue.

Since then, I've worked on several issues of Penumbra and interviewed a number of authors—including William Horwood, a hero on my personal bookshelf. I've also managed the blog, corresponding with authors to round up posts. I've even helped update Penumbra's Facebook and Twitter.

When I signed up as an intern, I didn't expect any of these opportunities. Sure, it's ended up being more complicated than what I originally signed up for, but it's also been a great learning experience. I've learned so much about writing, publishing, and how much work really goes into your favourite magazines. Even better, I've had the opportunity to meet and interview dozens of authors—both Penumbra authors and authors from each of Musa's imprints.

But what really stands out about working with the Penumbra team and the Musa staff isn't the lessons I've learned or the opportunities I've been given. It's the feeling that I've been brought into a big, happy family. Big staff meetings don't stress me out—instead, I look forward talking to the team and working to create our next issue. We've all been brought together by a love of fiction and a belief in the things Musa and Penumbra stand for—turning writers into authors, providing readers with great fiction, and paying our authors professional rates while keeping our fiction affordable.

I've had to take a step back from the actual Penumbra issues due to other commitments, but I'm still here working in the background. I've watched this magazine grow so much; I love each issue more than the last. I'm proud of what we do here at Penumbra and I hope to stay with this emagazine for years—both because I love the emagazine and because I love the people behind it.

Dianna L. Gunn is a young Canadian fiction writer who specializes in dark fantasy. She also writes poetry, generally dark, which is her way of dealing with life. This insightful author hosts a website covering every aspect of fiction writing and interviews with noted guest authors.

Learn more about Dianna L. Gunn on her website and follow her on Twitter.

When You Know It's Right

by Tom Brennan

I may be superstitious and/or suggestible but I believe in gut reactions, in the value of first impressions. So when, towards the middle of last year, a friend emailed to ask had I noticed a new listing on Ralan, I had a good feeling as soon as I saw Penumbra. I liked the layout, I liked the ethos, I liked the ‘feel’ of the site. I had a story which meant something to me and I thought would fit their outlook; I sent in my story with optimism…

The whole process worked so smoothly and professionally – and amazingly quickly. In the year since, I’ve concentrated on a fantasy novel called Doktor Glass, but I still think about seeing Butterfly out there so painlessly. I think writing over a long period of time requires no small measure of optimism, and it’s good to see optimism repaid. We need more publications like Penumbra and I hope to see them around for a long time.

Tom Brennan is a British writer living beside the Mersey River in Liverpool, UK. He works as an Emergency Medical Dispatcher and enjoys writing what he loves: Fantasy, SF, Crime, Literary, all with the invaluable help of an ethereal white cat called Delaney. He has a fantasy novel, Doktor Glass, out in January with Ace and is currently working on the sequel.

Stay connected with Tom Brennan on Facebook.

The Reality of Writing

by Jonathan Lamb

With this October being the one year anniversary of the Penumbra eMag, it is a time to offer congratulations. It is also a time to reflect on the phenomenon that is speculative fiction and the appeal that it has for so many. In other words, what is the justification for the Penumbra eMag’s existence and why has it been a success?

Beside the obvious business acumen and drive to succeed, one small part in the reason behind this is simple human nature; from time immemorial we have sought out new experiences and explained the seemingly inexplicable with stories and tales of a speculative nature. In the past this may have been put down to a lack of education, a reason for stories of witches active in the night, casting spells on unsuspecting good natured people or strange unnatural beasts stalking in the darkness. And yet we still persist in telling these tales today and indeed, inventing new ones.

Rather than a demise in speculative fiction following an advance in scientific knowledge and education, it has expanded, taking on new forms and digressing into a multitude of different areas. As technology and humanity have advanced so to has the diversity and scope of this literature. This form is a result of mental alacrity, the diverse and far ranging themes being creations of an authors mind, yet intrinsically needful of a tether to our known reality. Put simply, as our knowledge increases so to does our ability, drive and scope to create.

There is an underlying core to speculative fiction that taps into the nature of humanity, this need and drive to create and explore. We see time and again allusions to fantastical worlds, sci-fi utopias and dystopias; steam-punk worlds and werewolf ridden realities. The magnitude is rather astounding and without the ability to explore such places and experience them in reality, literature is the next best thing. There will always be, lurking like a troll within the recesses of our minds, the need to write this fiction and to read it; a speculation on reality and the world we exist in seeps from our inquisitive and inventive nature.

Whilst we persist in writing our world speeds up, the freedom to sit and read a novel can be swamped with the bombardment of modern life and its 24 hour stream of information. So the short story, the flash fiction and the intrepid adventures of compact writing come to the fore in a new light. Bite-size chunks of fantastic fiction capable of capturing the reader and sending their mind hurtling someplace else, all within the merest tappings of a keyboard. They have found a new niche, a further place in our society. Like the penny dreadfuls of old, people seek out the stories for a quick fix of literary escapism and worldly wonder. Following these best traditions of writing, what better format to give to avid authors and readers than the marriage of the old and new; the format of the electronic magazine and the coupling of the short story.

So it is with feeling that we wish Penumbra Emag well on its continued success. One year in and it remains a provider and companion to the unending universe of short speculative fiction, feeding the needs and desires of both writers and readers alike and long may it continue.

Jonathan Lamb is an inquisitive and thoughtful young man who likes to think, read and write. Unfortunately this does have the cumulative result of people finding him sat in strange places and staring into space.

Jonathon keeps a blog, updated intermittently, so you can check out some of what he babbles about HERE. If not, keep an eye out for his name as he intends to keep writing whether you like it or not.

A Virtual Horror Noob Speaks Out

by Jane Douglas

I was eight years old when I first met Edgar Allan Poe. For several weeks, each afternoon, my fourth grade teacher Miss Gough would gather her class around her feet like a brood of hungry chicks and read to us from Poe’s short stories. I can remember how excitedly we waited for story time, how even the wriggly kids hung on every word. The feeling of horror as the super-creepy ending of The Black Cat was revealed has never left me.

This past week, ahead of Penumbra’s Poe episode, reading Poe again, my first thought was, “What on earth can Miss Gough have been thinking?” Some of those are pretty scary stories. Perhaps she realized that Poe’s plots were no worse than the urban myths we kids would whisper in the dark during slumber parties, driving ourselves to fits of delicious, sleepless terror. Still, I doubt Poe would get a mention in fourth grade classes today. I imagine over-protective moms and school psychologists fearing emotional scarring would see to that.

Even though Poe’s stories are in some ways quite dated, for me, they still stir up sufficient plausible emotion that I can enjoy them as a toe-curling read. That surprised me, so I’ve given some thought to what it might be that gives Poe’s short stories such evocative power, even to me, a 21st century reader who likes to think she hasn’t a superstitious bone in her body. I should also say that I could count the works of horror fiction I’ve read on half a hand; I’ve tried to make a respectable list but after noting John Wyndham’s Jizzle, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, I ran out of puff. So, if you don’t mind, this article will be an honest appraisal from a virtual horror noob. With any luck, the result will bob to the surface fresh and perhaps even insightful, and not simply drown in a sad bucket of ignorance. Perhaps my observations of what works for me – and what doesn’t – might prove useful to some author somewhere. So here goes...

A lot of Poe’s short stories are written as first person narratives, and the narrator is always male. The plot unfolds as though it is being told, often conversationally, to the reader sometime after the events. Although we know from the start that the narrator survives his impending ordeal – here he is telling us about it – somehow that doesn’t detract from the power of being drawn through the narrative in a very personal way; we never stop wondering what will happen next. Because no omniscient narrator stands between the reader and the main character, we experience the action with him; Poe’s evocative writing has us imagining ourselves in his place. There is a grittiness about this style of narrative that reminds me of old detective novels, and indeed Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often credited as the first in the genre. Poe’s narrators are portrayed as ordinary men who find themselves involved in something extraordinary. This connection with a recognizable everyman provides the narrative believability; we can hear the voice of the person at the centre, which makes our access to his inner dialogue and emotions seem perfectly natural. We feel what the narrator feels, as he feels it. I like that.

Poe often leaps into the story with a start. The Tell-Tale Heart begins,

“TRUE! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”

as though the two of us have been conversing for some time already and we have just got to the good bit. It’s effective, and throws us into the plot with little time to catch our breath. Other times Poe addresses us more formally, and we feel we are reading a diary or journal account of the tale. Either way, Poe causes us as readers to quickly feel we are present in the action; and that is no mean feat.

Readers are sucked into Poe’s vortex of horror with what seems to be very little effort. Although his narrators often begin with protestations of rationality, they are all prone to attacks of superstitious jitters given spooky surroundings, and weird happenings. Often they admit repeatedly that their fears are baseless – and all of the circumstances related can be explained by coincidence or natural phenomena – yet they are not able to throw off an abiding feeling of dread. Poe’s skillful manipulation of common human fears, in reality, leads his readers into a shared attack of the heebie-jeebies, which, strangely, is compounded by the narrator’s pooh-poohing of his imaginings. Although the stories are macabre, they seem familiar. Who hasn’t got the willies jumping at shadows alone in some dark and spidery place? As Poe’s protagonist describes a growing and inexplicably visceral fear, we empathise with his crumbling mental faculties, and his incapacity to assert his reason to reverse the process. To experience terror at the imagined horrors of the unknown is a very human response.

Poe’s timing is near-perfect. He seems to have an uncanny sense of just how long he ought to string the reader along with creepy details and descriptions of inner cogitations before giving us something real to worry about. It’s as though Poe is aware that the more nervous the reader becomes, the faster they scan the text. As suspense mounts, often Poe produces long passages of description that the reader rushes through, eyes darting from one object to another in growing panic. He stretches those moments out just long enough to torment the readers’ nerves without irritating them to a point of unpleasantness. I imagine him slowing his emotional responses down so that they keep step as he handwrites the passage to suit the heightened emotions of his future reader. However he achieved it, Poe certainly had the knack. I was never bored, but always held at just the right level of tingliness in each moment.

One of Poe’s greatest talents is in employing evocative language to involve the senses of the reader; he makes us feel as present in the events of the story as any writer I know. A great deal of this sensual imagery is visual. Take this description from The Fall of the House of Usher:

“...the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode....”

Poe paints a picture of Gothic gloom, and although the rattling armour seems a cliche to the contemporary reader, in the context of the story, and even with the narrator smacking down his superstitious mental wanderings, it has an undeniably creepy effect. Decaying, dilapidated settings speak of the wrongness of the place; light and cheer are always absent as the material environment reflects the horror of the tale. In The Pit and the Pendulum, the story begins with the narrator regaining consciousness in a space filled with impenetrable darkness and Poe evokes feelings of dread through descriptions that involve senses other than sight. The pit emits a “clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus”; the stone walls are “smooth, slimy and cold”, the ground “moist and slippery”; we hear with the protagonist the tiny skitterings of the feet of approaching rats. These sensual descriptions are detailed, believable and never dull.

A truly great aspect of Poe’s horror stories is that every circumstance can be explained away without resorting to supernatural influence or the presence of mythical beasties. In The Black Cat, the arrival of a feline of very similar appearance to the narrator’s formerly tortured pet can easily be explained by co-incidence. Even the growth of white hairs in the shape of a gallows on the cat’s chest would attract little comment without the gin-addled, guilt-stricken mind of the narrator attaching meaning to it. Poe allows us to experience the prickle of fear such coincidences provoke, and then stands back while they lead us away to awful imaginings he never enunciates directly. A peculiar gentleman who mutter to himself in “gutteral tones” excites the universal dread of the insane; the ravages of alcohol abuse we know will lead to perverse and cruel acts against innocents; the dreadful consequences that follow those acts we imagine are a supernatural retribution; the horrible deaths in Murders in the Rue Morgue seem to have been perpetrated by a super-human, who turns out to be a cranky, knife-wielding orangutan. But these natural revelations are never a let down. Readers play along, aware of Poe’s sleight of hand, but allowing our own imaginations to become part of the story, our suspicions tools that Poe wields to develop terrors in our minds instead of plainly on the page.

But not every feature of Poe’s stories is as effective for the contemporary reader as it may have been for readers in the mid-19th century. We no longer believe that a person’s physiognomy unfailingly reveals their mental, emotional and moral state. Modern medicine has removed the dread of infection and fever; a “ghastly pallor of the skin” and “peculiar lustre of the eye” are unlikely to be viewed as harbingers of death, but as easily fixed with a Tylenol and a wee lie down. Unkempt hair and clothing no longer speaks of madness, drunkenness, or other morally questionable states. Thanks to 1940s cinema, depictions of an insane character ‘improvising mad dirges’ on an organ strike us as laughable, as does the frequent swoonings of the narrator in The Pit and the Pendulum (did people ever really faint away with fright?).

Poe’s original audiences would likely have been mostly Christian and this is apparent in his use of metaphors and imagery that would have caused his religious readers to worry at things that we do not. It is likely that they would have, for example, found it believable that the Usher household suffered from a “constitutional and family evil”. Poe’s descriptions in The Fall of the House of Usher of a “sulphureous lustre [which] lay over all” evokes well-known literary visions of hell, then believed to be a real and very much feared destination for the damned. It’s an oversimplification, but it is possible that in The Black Cat Poe’s early readers would have seen the narrator’s banging on the wall inside which he had interred his wife and so giving away his dread secret as a fair example of pride coming before a fall. Indeed, Christian morals abound in Poe’s writings once you start looking.

But those “flaws” notwithstanding Poe’s stories have endured because they are simply what we in Australia would call “bloody good yarns”. Poe spins us tales that trick, torment and ¬– even today – retain a power to shock, and better, surprise us just a little. Firmly rooted in a reality of sorts, and without the lashings of graphic gore upon which some contemporary authors rely, Poe draws us in, frightens us, and sends us on our way wondering how it was he managed to achieve that end with such simple devices. After reading them again, I was left with the firm impression that Poe’s stories contain many lessons from which modern horror writers could learn. Write me a contemporary version of The Black Cat and I’ll be happy to add it to my shelf.

Jane Douglas is a freelance writer, student and intern with Penumbra EMag. She lives with a tribe of children and way too many animals in Queensland, Australia.

First Anniversary Greetings from the Editor in Chief

by Celina Summers

Penumbra is one year old today.

How bizarre is that? A year ago, we pushed our first issue out on a raft made of bamboo into the hurricane that is publishing, and the darn thing didn't sink! In fact, that raft is still going, gradually strengthening along with the changes and additions we've made to the magazine, and now we have hundreds of you on board as well.

That definitely makes the journey more pleasant, as it should. When a magazine gains an audience, a dedicated readership, it's much easier to determine what types of stories they like.

So to me it only seems fair that you, the Penumbra reader, gets to toss us your two cents' worth on this, our first anniversary. If you could take a minute to answer the poll we've posted on this page, it will assist us as we continue to build Penumbra into the type of speculative fiction magazine that you want to read.

It is our greatest hope as we continue our mission to meet the needs of the readers who have been stranded after the demise of some of our long-time favorite sf/f magazines. We want to continue to grow and develop with our readership—a readership that multiplied swiftly after we offered to fulfill the contracts with the Realms of Fantasy subscribers. After we assumed those subscriptions, everything at Penumbra suddenly seemed more real…more pertinent.

With today's release of our Edgar Allan Poe issue, we've come to the next step for Penumbra. We will seek recognition from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and other spec fic organizations. We will strive to publish stories both from familiar names and debut authors. We will seek additional markets, reviewers, and awards recognition for our authors and their stories. We will continue to offer industry master classes to the authors, staff, and interns of Penumbra and its parent company, Musa Publishing, in the hopes of better equipping writers for careers as professional writers.

But above all, we will continue to offer you, the reader, the best examples of short fiction possible in every issue.

As an editor, I have to tell you that this year has been an absolute pleasure for me. I've enjoyed reading every submission, every story. I've been honored to work with a pair of amazing columnists, Lori Basiewicz and Richard C. White, who I think are among the best spec fic columnists out there right now. And then our staff: Alisha, who does layout and design; Brandie, who keeps me running on time; Dianna, who started with us at seventeen, continues to do a grown-up job at her internship; Sarah, who's not only the first set of eyes on Penumbra submissions but also does our monthly book reviews; Jane and Jude, our newly arrived interns; Cory, who has worked with me from the beginning to create the internal aesthetic and catch all those pesky comma mistakes; and, of course, my partner in crime Kelly Shorten, who creates the most visually stunning covers I've ever seen for a digital-only magazine.

Thank you for being a part of the Penumbra experience. We look forward to seeing you every month, right here, with a new issue for you to enjoy.

Penumbra turns 1

WELCOME to the MUSA Anniversary Blog hop stop for

Penumbra eMag the Spec Fic e-magazine

Not only is Musa Publishing turning one but so is Penumbra. And with a year of Spec fiction stories out their from issues on Shakepeare, Steampunk, Animals and Politics we still get asked what is Spec fic?

Not only can you find Penumbra at Musa Publishing but also at Magzter. So if you are looking for great short stories at a better price check out Penumbra.

Editor Matt Teal has a great answer.

"Believe it or not, the question I most often get from spec fic writers is, “What exactly is spec fic?” Someone sends me a manuscript, I accept it, and then a few weeks later they write me and say, in a cyber-whisper, “By the way, I was just wondering…” or “You know, a friend at work asked me the other day …” or “I’m really embarrassed to even ask this question …”

Don’t be embarrassed. Most of us grew up thinking in terms of two related genres—science-fiction and fantasy. I say related, but maybe what I mean is “inexplicably in the same section of the bookstore.” Fantasy and sci-fi tended to get lumped together, even though they were very different. Orson Scott Card once wrote that science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees. That’s a fun over-simplification, and there’s some truth to it. Really though, most people who read traditional sci-fi fans steer clear of traditional fantasy, and vice versa. The thing that bound the two genres together—at least in the minds of booksellers—was that both were fantastical.


The question in recent years has become, what do you do with books about fantastical subjects that don’t qualify as either sci-fi or as fantasy? For example, there was a disastrous attempt several decades ago to market George Orwell’s 1984 as science fiction. It might have some science fiction elements, but it’s definitely not the sort of thing most traditional sci-fi fans recognize as sci-fi. It is dystopian fiction, similar to Orwell’s other masterpiece Animal Farm, and Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World.

And what about the works of Charles Williams? Difficult to classify. Tarot cards that come to life; Platonic forms that roam the earth; Hell as a plane of existence that co-exists alongside our own. Sometimes you find Williams in the fantasy section, but that’s too easy. His books are not genre fiction; they are meaty and philosophical and full of deep theological themes.

So, what do we do with all these other books that don’t fit traditional definitions of fantasy (wizards, elves, and dragons) or science fiction (robots, machines, and space ships)? The solution has been an umbrella term: speculative fiction, or spec fic for short. Spec fic encompasses fantasy and sci-fi, but it also includes horror, dystopian and utopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, alternate histories, supernatural tales, even superhero fiction … basically, anything that speculates on the apparently improbable or seemingly impossible.

The term “spec fic” isn’t an attempt to rename the old fantasy/sci-fi section. It is, rather, a way to gather all the loose clusters of related genres under one convenient term. And you’ll find all of the above-named genres published at Musa under the Urania imprint (with the exception of horror, which is handled by Thalia, our paranormal line).

So don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know what spec fic is. Writers still tend to think of themselves as working in a particular genre, and those genres still hold. It’s simply a more expansive, more inclusive term."


COMMENTS


If you haven't read an issue of Penumbra this is your lucky day. To celebrate 1 year we are giving everyone who comments here a copy of the 1st issue just tell us what format you would like it and the email address to send it to. Also when you comment here you are also entered again to win the Kindle Fire and swag bags.

A Speculative Sense of Wonder

by Miriah Hetherington

Writing speculative fiction has influenced the way I read stories and changed the way I look at the world. In the same way I suppose a software designer can’t play a video game without appreciating the effort that went into developing it, or a chef can’t eat a meal without noticing the ingredients and considering what makes the recipe delicious.

I’ve learned that creating a story is different from consuming a story. Kind of like the difference between the compulsion to open every wardrobe door you see, and the drive to figure out exactly how to build a wardrobe from the wood of a magic apple tree.

Recently, I decided it was time to box up my children’s collection of picture books. My twins are entering middle school and a rapidly growing collection of chapter books and YA novels are stacked precariously next to, instead of inside, their full bookshelves like misshapen Lego bricks. Not that piles of books are an unusual sight around my house.

The initial organizational plan was to sort through them, keep my favorites, keep my children’s favorites, and donate the rest. Yeah, right. This task is so much more difficult than tossing out and donating the clothes my children have outgrown. Our so-called children’s books still fit.

Have you ever noticed how many picture books contain strong elements of speculative fiction? What would you draw with a magic purple crayon? How cool would it be to travel in a giant peach with insect friends as big as you? When the Cat in the Hat shows up, crazy wild terrifying and wonderful things will start to happen. He reminds me of Doctor Who.

I love short fiction that makes me think, that opens my mind and twists my understanding. I think the best speculative fiction also appeals to the child in us. We want to suspend our disbelief and remember that sense of wonder. We want to experience alternate realities. We want the thrill of being frightened by a scary story, because you’re never too old to sleep with the lights on.

The seed of my Dream Catcher story germinated in my head one night when I was putting my twins to bed. I foolishly caved to their desire to watch something scary on TV, and my penance included a good half-hour spent positioning and repositioning a dreamcatcher to my daughter’s satisfaction, directly over her pillow. She also asked me to repeat the familiar dreamcatcher legend several times. I complied with as much conviction as I could muster, hoping the power of suggestion would be enough to help her succumb to sleep. As I waited for her to slip into that angelic state, I thought about her questions. If the dreamcatcher worked, then what really happened to the bad dreams? Surely nightmares hold too much power and energy to simply melt away in the light of day. In fairy tales, dreams hold revelation, and no blessing comes without a price.

Reading and writing speculative fiction challenges me to move my point of view around until I see beyond what is in front of me. Can you see them? The fey folk that linger in your peripheral vision, but on direct inspection look like teenagers skateboarding in the park. You know as well as I do the bicycle-mounted police officer is wearing shiny plate armor and riding a white horse in an alternate reality.

So move your point of view around until you can see the speculative possibilities. Then write about them so other people can open the wardrobe door and see them, too.

Miriah Hetherington is a middle-aged stay-home mom residing in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and three daughters. Though she’s been reading speculative fiction stories for years, it wasn’t until relatively recently that she started to write them herself. Miriah is delighted that her very first published story, Dream Catcher, will appear in Penumbra’s September 2012 Native American issue.

Learn more about Miriah Hetherington on her website. Stay connected on Facebook and Twitter.