Welcome to our Featured Author Section for 2010. This year we are trying something new- and we hope you will like it. Along with our Featured Author information, we are also offering you a story from that author (most of the time it will be something that is brand new!)
We are especially delighted to present to you our first author of 2010- a name most of you have come to know and respect-Ralan Conley. While many of you know him from Ralan.com, his website Ralan's Extravaganza- which is a staple for most writers searching for current markets in which to offer their writing wares, how many of you knew that Ralan was a gifted writer as well? I can personally attest to his talents, because I own his book Tales of the Weupp- Little People Must Surrender- a truly different piece of work that will entertain you and leave you wanting more.
Please feel free to order your copy now- and show your support to Ralan for all the amazing work he has done to keep all of us alive and following our dreams of becoming published authors and seeing our work either in print or online by visiting his site and making a donation to his efforts. Thank you all for being a part of all our endeavors!
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Featured Author Featured Author Feature Author Featured Author
The Science Center Coup
by Ralan Conley
I stared Alderman Jenkins straight in the eye, fighting back the urge to spit in it. Did the fool really think he'd get away with this?
"Back off, Fremont," he said, sneering and banging his gavel. "Get off the podium."
I jerked away and retook my first row seat, thinking dark thoughts. The buzz of the townsfolk, eager for council meeting fireworks, faded. Jenkins ceased hammering.
"All right." His crooked smile showed off his perfect white teeth as he pushed back his wavy silver hair. "The council has already decided this matter."
A smattering of applause broke out, which made Jenkins grin as if they were landslide vote results.
"Attendance at our museum is way down, while Shrivshire's new Hands-on Center booms. What suits the goose suits the gander."
More applause.
"Next Monday, the Faxton Natural History Museum will close for improvements -- to reopen in six months as the Faxton Science Center. Kids'll love it. So will their parents ... the voters."
Turn our stately museum into a day-care center? Gods, I wouldn't have it. Leaping from my chair I charged him, halting an inch from his nose and shouting, "But we will be nothing more than baby-sitters. I..."
Alderman Jenkins pounded his gavel as the crowd roared in delight. "Fremont, we've been hearing your arguments for the last month. You're out of step with the times. Motion carried. Have the good grace to accept it with dignity."
There was nothing to say. I about-faced, squared my shoulders, and strode out of city hall in black despair. My assistant, Beverly Mellantrop, met me outside the front door.
"Well?"
"We lost." I elbowed past her.
"My god." She grabbed my shoulder. "What will we do?"
I rounded on Beverly, my hands rising as if to strangle her. "Do?" I dropped my hands. "Do?" Reeling away, I staggered down the stairs, sniffling. "We'll just have to learn to love the little bastards -- that's what we'll do."
But I knew I'd never learn to love them. I'd tried finding another job, but with so many museums going bust, jobs were as hard to find as cooperative jackasses.
I had to keep my position, but I didn't have to like it. Maybe I was out of step, but I loved museums -- have since before I discovered sex.
I began by devising acts of sabotage to destroy the project, and then forged them into reality. Architectural plans changed overnight, safeguards vanished, walls lowered, doors went lockless, fixed ports became hinged windows.
For six months I corrupted the work. Instead of building a safe haven of learning, my efforts guaranteed a den of danger. They'd have to close it down. Then it could reopen as before. At least that is how my addled brain reasoned it.
Nine o'clock on opening day. My plan concluded, I prepared to unlock the main doors. Outside, an oversized pair of adolescent twins with dirty fingers -- to say nothing of their intentions -- gripped the door handles. I watched in horror as they plastered their bloated faces to the glass and made fish faces at me with their flattened lips, their eyebrows pulsing like gills.
I eyed the crowd, desperate to find some help from their parents. But the only adults I saw were retreating through the simulated rain forest of our new neighbor, the Misty Zoo, heading for the mall. I hoped they'd ignore the warnings and pet one of the cute little poison dart yellow frogs from western Colombia, (Phyllobates terribilis).
I held my breath and unlocked ... the doors flung open, flopping me on my spine.
"Welcome to the Faxton Science Center," I screamed as sixteen pairs of dirty tennis shoes galloped over me, all heading for the sparkling new, expensive -- and by my design -- dangerous exhibitions.
As the children's footsteps faded away, I gathered myself up. In the distance, I heard Beverly appealing repeatedly, "Children, please don't unscrew the microscopes from the tables." She sounded louder and more imploring each time.
Trusting her to cope, I headed for my station, the Ecology Lab. The thud of a heavy metal object hitting the marble floor behind me, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, only quickened my pace.
"Well, Fremont, the big day has finally arrived."
I halted, glaring back at the entrance. Alderman Jenkins' silk-suited form stood backlit by the morning sun.
"It's for the best." He sneered at me. "You'll see. Just look at the crowd you got today."
"I counted sixteen." I sneered back. "And not one of them over ten years old."
"Youthful minds searching for enlightenment." He tipped his hat, waving a wad of cash. "They paid the admission. Have a nice day."
"Have a nice...?" I rushed to the door. Jenkins was nearly halfway down the path. He glanced back at me.
"Something on your mind, Fremont?"
I got hold of myself. Dignity, man. Dignity. "Just ... have a nice day, yourself."
Jenkins whipped off his hat and bowed. "Why, thank you, Fremont. Thanks so much." He fairly skipped down the path.
Whirling, I mounted the central staircase to emerge facing Hazardous Harbor, our large display basin, containing the most dangerous denizens of the seven seas.
The twins had found their way there. Having bared their feet and rolled up their jeans, they had scaled the too low (now how did that happen?) clear plastic wall and waded right in.
Bless them. I had guessed their affinity for this exhibit from their previous piscatorial posturing.
"Be careful boys." I knew they'd pay me no mind. "There are some dangerous species in that pool."
Amazingly, one of them actually looked at me, his face a quizzical mask.
"That stonefish, for example."
He scrutinized the fish in his right hand, ignorant of the fact that it was merely a symbiont.
"No. Not that one. That is a Cleaner Rasp. I meant the rather repugnant fish in your other hand."
He stared at the correct fish with genuine interest. "Cool."
"Yes." I admired the fact he could actually locate his other hand. "One of its spines contains enough toxin to stun a horse."
"Cooler!" He looked closer. "Which one?"
"Any of them."
He waded over to place the bewildered stonefish (genus Synanceja) on the mud slide simulator of the neighboring Denuded Forest exhibition. I hadn't counted on that. My sabotage had put the animal at risk. I had to save it.
Before I could act, a skinny six year-old -- red-haired and freckle-faced -- bounced over to smack the start button, releasing several pounds of British Colombian, old-growth forest mud. The luckless stonefish would be crushed. I pounced to the rescue and gently released it back into the harbor.
The girl giggled, then bellowed to the twins in a surprising deep voice, "Throw another one." Her willowy finger fluttered over the start button.
I groaned. What had I done? Was the loss of a few creatures worth the chance of getting our old museum back?
Luckily, the twins ignored the red-haired girl, as they tried to see who could squash the most long-stalked sea squirts (Styela montereyensis) between their toes.
Knowing the stonefish and his mate were in there -- not to mention two moray eels (Muraena helena), plus various other venomous or nonvenomous biters and stickers -- I kept my yap shut, hoping the animals would solve my dilemma.
Fortunately, or not, the treacherous inhabitants of the basin sensed they were outmatched -- they had gone into hiding. The twins, bored with their sea squirt game, stuck their heads underwater to locate more victims.
One twin lunged in. Water foamed from his fierce thrashing. At last he came up with an eel. A yard long and three inches thick, its viselike jaws could snap off a man's hand. But this nasty beast's only current desire was to flee the worse little horror that was holding it.
The boy cackled with glee and waded toward his brother, who had ducked his head to search for his own victims. Twin-with-eel stuffed it down his sibling's polyester jeans.
Twin-with-stuffed-jeans heaved himself up, farting copiously. He extracted the eel to see what other fun he might subject this slithery new playmate to, but dropped it into the water after observing its dizzy condition.
One had to admire their rather morbid curiosity.
Meanwhile, the red-haired girl had sought out her next bit of fun. Opening the door to the spotted owl enclosure, which I had made sure was not locked, she peeked in past the warning sign, "Keep Door Locked at all Times."
One owl escaped over her head. She grabbed for it, but missed. The owl made for the fountain in Hazardous Harbor where the twins were. This was getting out of hand.
Circling one of the boys, the bird defecated, scoring a hit on the brat's upturned face. Abandoning all decorum, I cheered the plucky little bird on.
The soiled twin fished and came up with a clamshell. He heaved it at the owl, but the spunky hooter dodged. The unguided mussel sailed on, hitting the other twin's ear. One more point for my fearless feathered friend.
The owl then perched in a shittah tree (Bumelia lanuginosa) on Reptile Isle where a twelve-foot python pounced on it. The cheeky little bird squawked in panic. Not with its usual "Whoooo?" -- it sounded more like "Whaaaat?" -- but managed to escape.
I was definitely regretting my acts of sabotage at that point. I never meant for any creature to come to harm. Two close calls -- first the rasp, then the owl. This would never do.
Feeling a tug on my pants, I regarded a ghostly pale kid, staring up at me with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. His face was like a plateful of pasta, with eyes like two green olives floating in bolognaise sauce puddles. One of his dinky, candy-coated hands clung to my Armani trousers. The other hand fluttered around trying to capture my attention.
"Hey, mister. What's this, huh?" His voice was a whiny, wetly nasal piping. "Huh? What's this, huh?" He sneezed like a volcano eruption and wiped his nose on my pant leg. I didn't mind so much. His inquisitive little mind fascinated me.
I grabbed his fluttering hand, pried open his fingers, and discovered a large brown, and very confused, spider in it. The curious youngster had filched it from our exhibit as I had planned, but now I didn't want it to get hurt either.
"Sorry son." I relieved him of it. "Arachnids are not my forte."
"Mein Gott, be careful," a frantic voice called from the corridor. I spotted a husky woman, clad in black, rushing toward us. "That is a Loxosceles reclusa."
At last I recognized the plump woman as Dr. Brunhilda Donnerstauf, or the Black Widow, curator of the Arachnid Arcade. A contender for the 1956 Nobel Prize in Biology, it was the first time I'd seen her in costume. I admired her shadowy veil and pointed hat.
Then the brown recluse assaulted my thumb and hopped to a nearby table. Pain erupted from my digit.
"Ouch." I grabbed my thumb as it flushed purple. My hand went numb and I could only reflect that I deserved this.
"Scheisse." The Black Widow opened her great sable handbag and rammed her ebony glove into its depths. After several concentrated minutes of searching -- to the humming of "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles" -- she pulled out her hand, clenching a horse-sized syringe. Peeking over her granny glasses, she examined the small print on its label.
"Nein." Flinging it over her shoulder, she fished into the huge bag again.
Meanwhile, the numbness reached my shoulder. It seemed to gather itself for a spring at my heart.
"Ah-ha," Brunhilda cheered, as a second colossal syringe emerged for study. "Ja." She stabbed me in the neck.
"Whaaaat?" I gurgled, mimicking my plucky owl friend. All bodily feeling dissipated -- my knees buckled.
"Anti-toxin. Achtung. It will be as tough as the winter march on Petrograd, but you just might make it." She slapped my back, slamming me onto the white marble tiles. A spasm rolled me over onto my back.
Staring at the ceiling, my vision clouded. Footsteps approached. Two blurred pink and brown ovals heaved into my kaleidoscopic field of view like immense hot air balloons. Wait ... I recognized those balloons. It was the twin's parents, come to reclaim their curious children.
"Such a wonderful place," The mother told the Black Widow, as she stepped over me without so much as a look.
"Yep," the father said. "Open tomorrow, ain't you? Thought we'd leave the boys for the day. Me and the Mrs. are going bowling. This is the cheapest baby-sitting in town. Say, who's the stiff on the floor."
At least he noticed. I lapsed into unconsciousness, hoping Alderman Jenkins would like the tumultuous twins, the gregarious red-haired girl, and the snot-nosed, pasta-face kid. Six months before, to mollify me, he had volunteered to substitute for me if needed.
The judge at my trail decided he'd have my job for some time. In a few years ... who knows? He may be so damn tired of it, he'll even consider giving an ex-con his old job back.
BIO: Ralan Conley lives in an alternate universe, inside a cave hidden in the frozen wastes of Scandinavia, where wine and cheese are aged. This, of course, limits his diet considerably and may be the reason for his overactive imagination. He earns his living writing, running his writers' resource, www.Ralan.com, and doing a bit of ice-dragonship piracy. His work has appeared in print and electronic publications too numerous, or obscure, to mention. Some of which, to the consternation of his former writing coaches, have won contests, awards, and reader's polls. Among these, three nominations for the Bram Stoker Award and a finalist for the Sapphire Award. Always a bride's maid.... Ralan's illustrated novelette book, Tales of Weupp: Little People Must Surrender, a fantasy adventure for all ages, is available at www.weuup.com
1. How Ralan.com came about.
As I re-started submitting short stories in 1993 (I had first tried my hand at this in my teens and early twenties), I found a real lack of market listings, publishing news, and resources. I subscribed to Writers Digest (it cost a fortune for delivery to the frozen wastes of Scandinavia) and bought their yearly Writer's Market, but found out the hard way that: 1.) their listings for speculative markets were limited, and 2.) many were badly out of date.
I wrote to every magazine I could find, asking for guidelines. As my collection of GLs grew I began putting them into an electronic form I could rifle through quickly, separating them into non-paying, paying, and semi- and pro markets. I also got online around that time because I taught computer skills (among other things) at a school for young people with serious problems. In my free time, I searched out new markets and writing resources (for my new "Links for Hungry Writers" page) as they began to come online. I taught myself (and my students at the same time) how to program HTML and together we built a web site for the school, one of the first educational sites in Scandinavia.
In November 1996, I felt I had enough material for a Speculative Fiction Market web site. My reason for going online was to help other writers like myself; those stuck in far away places with little or no information about writing, manuscript formatting, or how to find markets. I've always visualized my target user as someone in an underdeveloped country, who has to walk long distances to reach a larger village to get maybe ten minutes on a solar-powered computer. At that time, I called my web site "Ralan's Home on the Web." Soon other writers were contacting me with tips on markets and resources -- and the thing just grew. In 1998, I started mailing out a monthly newsletter to all the editors or publishers of the publications I listed and to writers who joined my mailing list. That list now goes out to about 2000 people every month as Ralan's Monthly Report.
2. How juggling a writing career, running a website and trying to live life in the real
world can pose problems/create opportunities/make your hair fall out.
My wife says I'm never in the real world! I spend the first four or five hours of my day working on the web site. I break for lunch, then I do some writing or rewriting if I'm lucky. If not, there's more stuff to do for the web site. Before I shut down for the day I will do an hour or two more on the web site, depending on what comes in via e-mail during the day. On the weekends I don't write, but I still do important updates for the web site. Other than that I like to watch a baseball game (in season), Dave Letterman (he helps keep me current on what's going on in the states), or documentaries on the History Channel. We live alone out in the boonies, so a trip to the big city to see a film is a rare treat and reserved for blockbuster films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman, Harry Potter, Star Trek, etc. Other than that, if there is any free time, I'll read. I get through a book a month, or so and some other things that happen by. I also read online if something catches my interest.
We became grandparents for the second time this year, and you can say we love it. Our grandson (3� years) and granddaughter (3 months) are the cutest, and nothing makes us happier than them coming to visit. When one or both of them are here I don't get much work done.
3. Anything else you want readers to know about you.
My first book is out. It's a fantasy novelette (13,000 words), with a full-color cover and 6 interior illustrations by the talented artist (and online friend) Jesse Bunch. Jesse did illustrations for my contest every year I had it. I immediately thought of her for this project. Her work on it is fantastic.
The book, "TALES OF WEUPP: Little People Must Surrender," is a trade paperback. It is hopefully the first of many Tales of Weupp (depending on sales, so please buy a copy so I can write more!) to come. I've set up a web site for it at http://www.weupp.com , where you'll find the cover, an interior illustration, a summary, an excerpt, ordering information, and a guestbook hosted by Weupp herself (an intelligent planet). You can ask her anything! +++ ( I read it and loved it!)+++
Featured Author
Ralan Conley
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