K.C. Ball lives in Seattle, a stone’s throw from Puget Sound. She is an night owl, an afternoon sleeper, who writes through the wee hours because there are so few interruptions. Her short fiction has appeared in various online and print publications, including Flash Fiction Online, Every Day Fiction, Boston Literary Magazine, Big Pulp and Murky Depths.

Her flash fiction story, Hair of the Dog, was included in the 2008 Best of Every Day fiction anthology and her story, Coward’s Steel won third place in the 1st Quarter 2009 Writers of the Future competition. It will appear in the Writers of the Future XXVI anthology in August 2010.

K.C. is editor of 10Flash Quarterly, an online magazine featuring genre flash fiction, and she blogs about writing at A Moving Line.

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FFC: Welcome, K.C. Thank you for stopping by EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles and allowing me put you in the hot seat.

You’ve been a frequent contributor to the FFC blog and  Every Day Fiction.  Your posts here and your flash stories at EDF draw many, many readers.  Recently you also finished a six-month stint as a slush reader at EDF, so your talents and contributions to the EDF-FFC reading and writing community are certainly appreciated.  And if that isn’t enough to keep you busy, you’ve launched your own e-zine, 10Flash Quarterly as well be becoming a recent  winner in the Writers of the Future’s Quarterly Competition. We’ve got a lot to talk about!

FFC: Let’s start with you telling us a little about yourself and how you ended up writing flash online.

K.C.: I’ve enjoyed reading for as long as I can remember. I grew up with my nose in one book or another and always had a knack with words, spoken and written, first in high school and college and then professionally.

I was a newspaper reporter for a number of years and then moved on to media relations with several public agencies in Ohio. And while I’ve done a lot of other things professionally over the years, all of them involved a high level of written communication.

And I played around with fiction, even got up the courage a couple of times to submit a story here and there, but never for any sustained period. I was always telling myself I could do it, if I just had the time.

January 2008, I decided I needed to stop talking and start writing.

I began to write daily, 500 to 1,000 words, and submitting my completed work. I think I was drawn to flash fiction because of my training as a journalist. Newspaper reporters have to write tight, to get the story told in the most compact manner possible.

Just like flash.

My first accepted story was “The Mixture.” It appeared July 5, 2008, at Every Day Fiction. Since then, twenty-seven of my stories have appeared in various online and print publications and three more are scheduled – “We Who Are Ernest Now Salute You” at Alien Skin Magazine in October and “A Son of the Night” at A Thousand Faces in December, and “Coward’s Steel,” in Writers’ of the Future XXVI next August.

I also have eight stories making the rounds right now and two more that are in the last stages of completion. Both of them, “Wayfarer” and “From a Height,”  should be in the mail within the week. If there are any secrets to getting published, that’s one of them. The first is to keep your bottom in the chair to finish stories. The second is to keep your finished stories circulating until someone buys them. It’s just that simple – and that difficult.

FFC: What about the Writers of the Future competition? What’s that all about? What did you do and what did you win?

K.C.: Jordan Lapp, executive editor of Every Day Fiction, turned me on to Writers of the Future. He won first place in the 4th Quarter 2008 competition and when I sent a congratulatory e-mail, he responded by chiding me for never having entered.

That was in early December 2008. I had a suitable story, “Coward’s Steel,”  almost ready and so I sent it off December 30, 2008, two days before the 1st Quarter 2009 deadline. Much to my surprise, I won third place.

Since then, I’ve discovered that the competition is a much bigger deal than I imagined last December; one of the most significant competitions in the science fiction field. It’s sponsored by the L. Ron Hubbard Foundation and judged by some of the most famous authors in the business. They get thousands of entries every year and there are only twelve winners – three each quarter.

There’s a substantial cash prize involved, as well as a professional-rate payment for publication in the annual Writers of the Future anthology, an expenses-paid writers’ workshop in Los Angeles in August, just before the anthology is issued, trophies and a formal awards ceremony.

And of course, the right to announce on your resume that you’re a Writers of the Future winner. It’s been going on now for twenty-five years and a fair number of the winners have gone on to successful writing careers.

It’s a great opportunity for anyone who writes science fiction and it doesn’t cost a penny to enter.

FFC: Since you’ve placed the Writers of the Future competition, we know you’re an excellent science-fiction writer. Can you talk a little about sci-fi and why it appeals to you as a writer?

K.C.: I’ve been in love with science fiction since I first read Heinlein’s Starman Jones in 1956. I was nine years old and the story tugged at my mind and soul. I’m addicted to reading fiction, all manner of fiction, but SF has a special spot in my heart.

SF examines ideas and so the stories can be set anywhere, any time and any place. Other genre fiction has certain formulas that are followed, but SF can be about anything. All that is required is a single element of the fantastic.

For example, one of my favorite SF stories of the sixties was “Carcinoma Angels” by Norman Spinrad. Almost the entire story is played out within the body of the protagonist, where he has used drugs to isolate himself to fight the cancer that is killing him.

One of my favorite SF authors today is Kij Johnson, who lives here in Seattle. Kij focuses on novels, which are fantastic, but does turn out the occasional short story. “Her Twenty-Six Monkeys, Also the Abyss” is about a woman who travels around the country in an old bus with twenty-six monkeys, doing shows at fairs and carnivals.

The finale of the show has the monkeys climbing into an old claw-foot bathtub and disappearing. It’s an incredible story that is heart-breaking and hopeful at the same time. A lovely piece of writing.

FFC: What other genres offer you inspiration? Which do you prefer?

K.C.: I love suspense stories. Not so much the standard detective story, so much as crime-caper fiction. Serious stories are acceptable, particularly noir, but what I really like is comedy.

Donald Westlake, God rest his soul, was a master at it. I have every one of his Dortmunder novels and have read every single one over and over. If you haven’t read any of the books, John Dortmunder is a criminal mastermind with the worse luck of any human being on Earth.

And I am a fan of horror stories, too, but not so much the monsters and gore variety. My preference, what I tend to write, is psychological horror. You don’t need monsters to be scary and I love it when I feel that frisson that comes when reading successful horror. I once heard that moment described as waking up in absolute darkness, reaching out to the bedside table for your glasses – and having them handed to you. Goosebumps! I love it.

FFC: We know you’ve been very successful in creating a presence for yourself online. You’ve been published in numerous e-zines. Could you tell us about where we can find some of your stories? If writers look to you as a role model, what advice do you have for them?

K.C.: For anyone who is interested in reading my work, there are links to almost all my stories at my blog, A Moving Line.

As to advice, as I have already said, write every day, keep your seat in front of the keyboard and keep submitted your finished work, even when it seems that all you’re getting is rejections. We learn far more from failure than we learn from success.

I also would like to say that you can’t be shy. It is possible to go after what you want and do so without harming others, but you can’t wait for someone to invite you to participate. That’s wonderful when it happens, it’s what I’m trying to do with 10Flash, but you have to look upon such invitations as something unexpected and special, not as your due.

FFC: Let’s talk a little about 10Flash. Why have you launched your own e-zine? What is it like?

K.C.: 10Flash Quarterly features ten genre flash fiction stories each issue, all written around a common unifying thread. The unifying thread and the 1000-word length are the only criteria. The stories can be written as science fiction, fantasy, horror or suspense.

Even though the second issue is out now (October 1), the magazine is still evolving, most likely because I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t work. I hope by next July to have everything settled in.

I started 10Flash because I saw it as a opportunity to help other writers in two ways. First, by providing another paying market ($20 per story) for genre flash fiction, and second, by offering an editorial voice to help fledgling authors grow.

I comment on every story submitted, whether accepted or rejected, and offer suggestions to improve it. And I like to engage in a dialog with the authors of accepted stories. I have some very definite ideas about the sort of story I want to publish, but I also understand that authors want a certain give and take with the editor.

I’m pleased with the first two issues. All of the stories have been good; some of them have been inspired. Oonah V. Joslin’s “A Professional Job,” in the October issue, is a caper story and it is an absolute hoot. And Alex Burn’s “Four Liars,”  in the July issue, is a sweet piece of steam-punk science fiction.

Keep watching, though; it’s just going to get better.

I’ve had over 4,000 visits to the July issue; not bad for not having done any sort of promotion, other than word of mouth. Since then, I’ve had a couple of invitations to do interviews, such as this one, at various writing-related sites. Those have gone well, I think. And I hope to begin a bit of advertising before October is over. We’ll see how that goes.

FFC: What other advice would you give to emerging writers in general?

K.C.: In D’Shai, Joel Rosenberg’s protagonist, a member of a clan of acrobats, is told that the secret to life as an acrobat is balance. The running joke through the novel is that the members of all the clans believe that they know the secret to life. Balance.

That’s as good a piece of advice for a writer as it is for an acrobat or anyone else. It’s particularly true when receiving critique. Don’t be so full of yourself that you refuse to listen to advice about your writing but don’t be so uncertain of your own ability that you never weigh that advice against your own instincts. Balance is the way.

FFC: We hear you’re going to write a weekly column for FFC. Is that true? What else is next?

K.C.: I’m hoping to begin a weekly column here at FFC before October ends. And I’m looking for my third professional science fiction sale sometime soon. That will allow me to join the Science Fiction Writers of America, the professional association for SF writers. Of course, the Writers of the Future program is coming up in August.

I’ve just begun to attend the various science fiction and fantasy conventions. I was at Foolscap 11, in Redmond, just last week and met some swell folks – fans and writers – and I plan to attend SteamCon, the inaugural steam-punk convention in Seattle at the end of this month.

I’m still writing flash, of course; I love the authorial restraint necessary to get a story told in 1,000 words. But over the past nineteen months my stories have been growing. One of the pieces I’m just finishing is “Wayfarer,” a science fiction story set on Daniel, a world of my creation. You may recall that we talked a bit about it over breakfast last January in Vancouver.

“Wayfarer” finished out at 10,000 words, almost novella length, and I’m outlining a novel now that also will be set on Daniel. I’m hoping to have first draft done by the time I go to L.A. in August for Writers’ of the Future. I’ve got a momentum going there that I don’t want to lose.

FFC: Thanks, K.C., for allowing EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles to interview you. We wish you great success with 10Flash, the Writers of the Future program, and of course, your writing career.

K.C. : Thank you, Gay, for the opportunity to tell my story.