Hi. My name is Greg Bossert. For the last couple of years I have been writing Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror under my full name, Gregory Norman Bossert, and I have been fortunate enough to have sold a few stories. Here’s more about me. You can buy my stories from Fictionwise: see here for details. Then again, you’re probably looking for more information on the fantastic artwork.
Jan 012009
Feb 082012
Masses of monsters! Bountiful beasts! It’s the Shared Worlds Critter Corral! I am delighted to have helped out with this fantastically cool project, part of a registration and fund drive in support of the Shared Worlds SF/F teen writing camp! It features all new flash fiction from Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Scott Westerfeld, Gene Wolfe, Patrick Rothfuss, Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, Lev Grossman, N.K. Jemisin, and on and on: a who’s who of speculative fiction including my wondrously talented Clarion 2010 colleague Karin Tidbeck.
Jeff VanderMeer conceived the idea, which was based around an image from the always astounding Jeremy Zerfoss. The delightful Teri Goulding compiled and edited the stories, and I did the web coding and contributed a small story of my own.
The image here is just a sliver of the wonders that await. Head over to Shared Worlds and explore. And if you like what you see—and I am sure you will—then consider leaving a donation to support these sort of projects and a truly great writing program.
I have been working on Gardens of Miranda, a stop-motion science fiction series from master sculptor and animator Tony McVey. Tony has worked on everything from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger with Ray Harryhausen to The Dark Crystal to The Return of the Jedi; I worked with him on Beowulf and A Christmas Carol at Disney. I worked with Tony in 2007 on his animation Skull Island, doing all the visual effects, sound design, and musical score. I’m doing the sound and music and the occasional odds and ends for Gardens of Miranda.
Here’s a preview of Episode One: the arrival at the mysterious planet and the introduction of one of our heroes: FE, the Flying Eye robot. Check his blog for pictures of some of the amazing puppets and props. And stay tuned for the final release of Episode One!
Feb 062012
I’ve got a stack of stories either cooling their heels in the slush or pacing the halls of my laptop waiting for delivery of a few more words. Here’s a glimpse of a few:
Feb 052012
I’ve had an odd winter so far, filled with unexpected efforts, fortuitous meetings, and strange diversions. A couple of exciting projects are going public in this coming week: a beastly bounty from the Shared Worlds Writing Camp and a stop (motion, that is) on the way to the mysterious Gardens of Miranda. I’ll be posting about them later in the week. So now seems like a good time to catch up with some of the things I’ve done in the last few months.
In December I did the design, artwork, and animation for the 
Cheeky Frawg Books website, working with Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, artist Jeremy Zerfoss (who did the Frawg logo and the wonderful book covers), and web guru Danny Fontaine. This is the same crew with whom I worked on my Myster Odd animation last summer, and it was once again a delight. In fact, the Cheeky Frawg site is based on Myster Odd’s writer’s garret. I designed and built the “set” with the Autodesk Maya software, using hand-painted textures and lighting to try to capture the quirky, timeless spirit of the Cheeky Frawg publications. There are a lot of odd easter eggs and free stuff on the site, so go ahead, poke through Myster Odd’s stuff! And while you are there, check out the catalogue for some extraordinary e-books and dare the ODD.
My novella “Slow Boat“, originally published in the July 2010 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, was reprinted in Russian in the November 2011 issue of Esli Magazine. There are a number of footnotes that seem to be addressing some of the obscure slang I threw in, or in some cases, simply made up; I imagine it was a head-scratcher to translate, but such is always the lot of the translator…
Check in tomorrow for an update on my stories-in-progress!
Oct 122011
For maximum oddness watch this fullscreen at 720p HD!
I made this video to celebrate the release of the ODD? anthology series from Cheeky Frawg Books. The first volume features a odd and awesome story from my Clarion classmate Karin Tidbeck, as well as stories from Amos Tutuola, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeffrey Ford, Rikki Ducornet, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Hiromi Goto, Stacey Levine, and Jeffrey Thomas and many more.
For more information on the video, check out my film & music website: www.SuddenSound.com
Clarion-mate Dustin Monk’s story El Camino is in the latest issue of Digital Science Fiction. You can by it for the Kindle from Amazon, or for most other formats from Smashwords.
Dustin’s prose is mad, effortless, and extraordinary. And his screwed-up, screwed-over, big-dreaming characters are so real and deftly drawn that the writer half of me itches with envy and inspiration. The reader half of me just wants more.
The second week of my Clarion Write-a-Thon effort was somewhat the reverse of the first week. My first week story at Clarion 2010 had seemed like a complete loss at the time, but last week I stripped it down to the basics of motivation and conflict, and found what feels like a way forward. My second story at Clarion 2010, titled Goner, was perhaps my favorite at the time, but I’ve really struggled with revising it over this last week. Continue reading »
For the Clarion Write-a-Thon, I am revising the six drafts I wrote during Clarion 2010. My first week story is titled “The Last Cup”. I came up with the idea Saturday while driving down to San Diego with Clarion-mates Jennifer Hsyu and Dallas Taylor, and wrote it up over the next two days for my first critique that Tuesday.
Because Delia Sherman and special guest Ellen Kushner were the first week instructors, I went with a fantasy: just my second attempt at the genre up to that point. And for reasons that surely made sense at the time, e.g. delerium, I decided to go for comedy, which was entirely new for me. But the real test wasn’t the genre, it was the deadline: I had only written six stories ever up to that point, and each one had taken many weeks to complete. I got myself in a bit of a panic, and started just typing wildly; as it turned out, both the panic and the wild typing would continue for the next six weeks…!
Jun 272011
I am proudly participating in the 2011 Clarion Write-a-Thon, both as a sponsor and as a writer. My writing goal is to revise the six stories I wrote when I attended Clarion 2010, and get them out the door and submitted somewhere. Here’s an overview of the six stories; I’ll post more details each week.
I think the Clarion Writers’ Workshop is a marvel–the UCSD incarnation and its Clarion West sister–and worthy of support from both writers and readers. Take a peek at my other posts on Clarion to get an idea of how wonderful, challenging, crazed, and successful the program and my classmates have been.
The Stories:
May 272011
When an idea is is startling and original, we say “it comes out of nowhere”. But the best of those ideas feel like they did in fact come from somewhere, someplace that had been previously hidden. It’s a thrill not so much of innovation as it is of discovery; you stare with Keats’s wild surmise, and say “of course it is”, and feel like the world is both wider and a little more complete.
That’s how I felt when I picked up the first Borderland book in 1986. The blending of punk and faery, the idea that the border with the fée might cut through through our modern cities as easily as it does through the countryside distant in place and time, the grimy half-starved reality of faery’s traditional peril, it all was manifestly, essentially right.
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