Wendy Wheeler's Published Fiction

News

November 2024: Come see me and a host of other writer and presenters at the Roanoke Writers Conference on November 9th. It's a free one-day event hosted by the Roanoke Library (Roanoke, Texas, is a suburb in west Ft. Worth) and coordinated by the North Texas Writers Coalition. I'll be presenting on "Writing Fiction vs Writing a Screenplay."

August 2024: Had a great time returning to Glasgow, Scotland, for the world science fiction convention in August. I was on three panels with respected writers of science fiction and fantasy worldwide, plus people like me that dabble in movies/TV. My highlight: Modernating a panel on updating fairytales with Terri Windling, who chose a Wendy story for the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror one time. You can see which panels in Glasgow WorldCon. (When I say I'm returning, I made the trek from Texas to Glasgow in 1995 and was on WorldCon panels back then...Fond memories!)

June 2023: Albuquerque was amazing! Big props to our Taos Toolbox instructors and award-winning writers of SF/F, Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress! There were 18 students with strong skills in this Masters-level writing workshop; so glad I was accepted! And one of our special instructors was George R.R.Martin (Game of Thrones)! I've met him before, but it was cool to have him address us.

April 2023: This is my year, now that I retired, to write my 1st novel. Or, complete and not just start my first novel. I did a workshop on how to use NLP to break blocks. And, though I'm distracted with selling my house and moving to Granbury, I also applied and got accepted to the Taos Toolbox 2-week writers workshop. I'll be learning from professionals about how to achieve a full draft! Very lucky to get in because 2024 was the final workshop.

February 2023: The Prince of Cats Literary Productions is reprinting the old (1990's!) anthology by Christopher Stasheff & Bill Fawcett: The Crafter's. It was a story collection meant to compete with Alvin the Maker, I think. My story "A Cup of Chaos" will be in it! Announced, but I haven't actually seen one in the flesh. Nor does it seem the authors get more $$$...

November 2015: My story/essay contribution to Joseph Gordon-Leavitt's hitRECord.tv Season One was just issued in a box set. My words are HUGE on the booklet for "The Other Side" episode where JGL said my words in his monologue. Yay! And the season won an Emmy! (So, like, 0.000846% of that is mine; making progress on my EGOT!)

May 2015: "Little Red," the story that never quite goes out of print, and many of the other stories in the Snow White, Blood Red anthology got made into an Ansible audio book. I haven't heard my story yet; I need to do that!

July 2014: I started writing, finishing and submitting new fiction again in 2014. My first online story just came out (indeed, my first new fiction in quite a while!): "The LevoGyre," a short short story in Daily Science Fiction.

January 2011: The new anthology Happily Ever After... edited by John Klima and printed by Night Shade Books, will reprint my creepy, dark fairytale update, "Little Red."

Christmas 2008, my holiday poem/song, "A Genre Take on Christmas," has been recorded and podcast by Space Squid and RevolutionSF. Warning, it's got a lot of me singing a cappella! The performance includes members of the SlugTribe.

2008: The adult fairytale antho, Silver Birch Blood Moon, with my "best of" story "Skin So Green and Fine..." will be re-released by Sean Wallace's Prime Books.

Blanche Neige, rouge sang March 2003, the French version of Snow White, Blood Red was just released, with my story "Little Red." Translated, the title is now "Carmina." Since I can read French somewhat, I'm very impressed with the translation. Good vernacular, very powerful phrasing. The book cover is also ooh-la-la. As you can see, they have no worries about total frontal nudity on the front of a book! The anthology title in French is Blanche Neige, rouge sang. I love this anthology--it's never gone out of print since 1993, and it's had American, British Commonwealth, and now French editions put out. I also love those little royalty checks that keep coming in a few times a year every year...

August 2000, the 13th Annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror hit the stores! And my story from Silver Birch Blood Moon is in it! Yee-hah!!

I started writing science fiction, fantasy & horror short stories about 25 years ago. I've sold several, and received some good reviews. One story was selected for the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror. Some stories have been used as required or suggested reading for college curricula. Because of my pro status, I've sat on panels with Frederick Pohl, Neil Gaiman, Bruce Sterling, Lois McMaster Bujold, etc. I've been published in anthologies with my hero, Tanith Lee, and gotten a Christmas card from another hero, Andre Norton. No novels yet, but I have two agents and two editors interested when I write one!

A few fellow writers and I started The SlugTribe, a critique and support group for science fiction, fantasy, and horor that is still going strong 30+ years later. Officially, we're the SF/F/H study group of the Writers League of Texas.

For the past few years, I haven't written as much fiction as I should. Instead, I wrote some screenplays and co-designed a game. Plus I'm collecting stuff for my musical one-act play, and for my second novel, to be entitled The Four Last Things.

Want to read some of my writing?

Online publication market Daily Science Fiction published my flash fiction time travel story, "The LevoGyre" in July 2014.

Silver Birch, Blood Moon,
Published by AvoNova in Spring of 1999, was No. 6 in the adult fairytale anthology from Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I had a story in the first volume (see below), and now this volume also has a story by me: "Skin So Green and Fine..." Can't give you the whole story, but If you'd like to read the first few pages (can't give you the whole story!)

NEWS FLASH! This story was selected for reprinting in "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 13th Edition" published by St. Martin's Press in August of 2000. It's like winning an Academy Award nomination! Thanks so much to Terri Windling, who selects for the fantasy side of the collection!

News: Prime Books will be re-releasing this anthology, probably some time in 2009.

Little Red - Fantasy Story
Here's the cover of the hardback version of Snow White, Blood Red; edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. My story in this volume appears just behind the one written by Tanith Lee--one of my literary heroes! I got all choked up over that.. Amazingly, this anthology has been reprinted again and again, so you can probably find the paperback in your local bookstore! I'll give you a taste, but you can still buy the anthology in stores if you're curious. Read the beginning of "Little Red,"

I write nonfiction, too, when somebody asks me. Here's an article I wrote about a cool workshop that was created and coordinated by two members of the SlugTribe writers group that I'm in. Jennifer Evans (who also co-coordinated writers workshops with me for SF/F conventions) did this workshop with Chris Kelly about overcoming writers block, and it was an unusually tactile type of presentation. Read "The Wromper Room for Writers Block,"

New Skill: Screenplays! Since I'm a very visually-oriented person, I write my stories with lots of images and sensory description. That makes them fairly easy to turn into screenplays. I also workshop with the Austin Screenwriters Group. Please check out my loglines, and let me know if you'd like to produce, option or represent my work!

Poetry?
Oh sure. Just for the heck of it, here's a horror poem I published in The Silver Web a few years back. It was an experiment in rhyming, mostly. I just allowed the pursuit of the rhyme to determine the story inside the poem. When you see it, you'll see what I mean. Read "One Night at Ed & Lucille's."

Wendy Works - My Published Fiction and Non-
This is a list of my fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that has found a home in someone's magazine. Thanks very much to all the editors who read and accepted my work! Especially to the ones who've paid well and promptly (getting money to make up stuff is fun!). Read this oh-so-impressive list :-)

Some Cool Links for the Fictionally Inclined

The SFWA site has lots of useful articles and info and links. That's the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, in case you didn't know!
Meaty Info for Screenwriters that you can subscribe to. I check in from time to time to see what scripts they have to be down loaded.
A List of Almost All SF/F Sold in America! This is brought to you by the fine folks at Locus Magazine, the magazine for the science fiction & fantasy professional.