"The Grace of Turning Back" at Beneath Ceaseless Skies

"The Grace of Turning Back," the final story of the Curse-Strewn World sequence, appears in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #179, which can be read on the BCS website or in the Kindle store.

The Tynesi merchants, who traded everything from the silver rice of Timru and perfume leaves from Simrandu to chips of ivory off the Keld’s temples, had a term for a particular sort of improvidence: to throw money, time, or strength into seeing to completion a bargain they had already got the worse end of. It’s all After-Bad, they’d say.
A useful phrase. Aniver vaguely remembered his clearheaded pleasure at first learning it.
That pleasure blossoming within his soul had been sacrificed to fuel a magelight to chase away Semira’s nightmares as they approached the edge of the world. It hadn’t meant much to him, had not made up more than a candlelight’s worth of his being, but Aniver was down to the dregs of his power now. And he was draining those dregs, perhaps After-Bad, but he didn’t think they would do much good where he was going.

Has Aniver thrown so much of himself away After-Bad that he has nothing left for his last great spell, returning Nurathaipolis and her sister cities to their proper place in time? At what cost? Can Semira help him without losing herself, too?

You'll have to read to find out, but I will say writing the ending of this one had me tearing up more than once. Maybe because I'm sentimental, maybe because the Palisades Library (where my friend got me in Tuesday evenings for weekly writing parties) was very dry, who can say?

Also, [slight spoiler follows] for those of you curious to see how a Grace with six wings might look, this gorgeous piece by Rebecca Yanovska might help provide an idea. I didn't see it until I was into the editing process, but when I did I had that feeling of recognition.

I'm very grateful to Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies for publishing the Curse-Strewn World stories, and of course to all of you for reading along with them!

While "The Grace of Turning Back" brings Aniver and Semira's stories to a conclusion, it isn't necessarily the last we'll ever see of them. Two prequel pieces are in my drafts notebook--"The Queen of Yesterday," referenced in "The Storms in Arisbat," has an interesting tale to tell, and of course there's the story of how Aniver and Semira met in the first place on The Glass-Clear Sea.

I can't promise I'll be able to smuggle a secondary-world version of the Sunk Cost Fallacy into those, but I'll surely have fun trying.

"Arnheim's World" in Analog Magazine

In the May 2015 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, alongside fiction from Rajnar Vajra, But Sparhawk, Robert R. Chase, Aubry Kae Anderson, and J.L. Forrest, my story "Arnheim's World" explores the economics, ethics, and (anti)sociability of terraforming.

Environment, economics, ethics, all stewing in a high-tension dilemma. Exactly the kind of thing you'd expect of me, I hope. 

I worked on this piece on and off from 2011 onward, intrigued by the idea of a person wealthy enough and motivated enough to shape a planet in their own image. The plot changed direction several times as I incorporated new concepts and found myself drawn towards one character's argument or another's as they addressed the central conflict. A lot of my science fiction stories deal with dilemma, and until I find a resolution that satisfies me they can sit unfinished for a long time. Mind, just because I pronounce myself satisfied with a story's ending doesn't mean I think any one character made the right decision--just that I sympathize with them all and find the outcome of events pleasingly...twisty. Or twisted. Sometimes I write an ending I find myself hoping readers will argue with (I still remember reading along with TV Tropes, trying to find loopholes to 'fix' "The Cold Equations"). 

For "Anheim's World," I think the conflict that most preoccupied me is less about economics than about friendship and betrayal--and times when betraying a friend may be the nobler decision.

You be the judge. 

"For Lost Time" up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Lose no time in going to check out the latest installment in Across the Curse-Strewn World, a short story sequence following the wizard Aniver and his friend Semira's quest to rescue his home city, which has somehow become lost in time.

Their discoveries in the terrifying library of Arisbat have pointed Aniver and Semira in the right direction, but what a direction it is--the source of the blight that struck Nurathaipolis appears to have come from the Kingdom of the Dead. Aniver's reckless plan requires that he scout out the territory first...

"For Lost Time" appears in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #165, and can be read on the BCS website or on Kindle.

New Release: Different Dragons II

"Of the Generation" has been reprinted in WolfSinger Publication's Different Dragons II, a collection of cliche-busting dragon stories.

To celebrate the new release, WolfSinger is offering a 25% discount through Createspace-- follow the link and enter discount code TGERED9J at checkout. For those who prefer ebooks, the Smashwords coupon code ED26N will also give you a 25% discount at checkout. Both codes are valid only until October 15, so move quickly! 

Fictionvale pub announcement!

My fantasy story "Eisiden's Sister" has appeared in Fictionvale's 4th episode.  The third published piece featuring swordsman Rathin and wizard Anweth, it actually takes place towards the end of their timeline--and features a major twist in their circumstances.

Also keep an eye out for my guest post on the Fictionvale blog early next week. It'll be a quick checklist to getting started publishing short fiction.

I'm glad of the opportunity to guest blog, not least because it encourages me to actually complete a post. I have a number of drafts on this blog (the specific number is 64), most of which are book reviews and writing advice. The reason I haven't had a lot of time to write advice for the general public is that I've been busy working with specific manuscripts! As I wrap up client projects, I'm seeking out more, but I'm also hoping for a little more downtime in which to write both fiction and nonfiction again. 

News and forthcoming reviews

Well! This past June 8, I celebrated a birthday by touring Mt Vernon and leading my mom on a perhaps ill-advised adventure to the Bake Shop at Clarendon for macaroons (fittingly, they had Birthday Cake flavor). Ill-advised because our GPS satellites konked out on the return journey, leaving a woman from Wisconsin and a woman unfamiliar with driving in D.C. to navigate our way back to the hotel. I began to suspect some force didn't want me to leave the Washington metro area.

But, whatever that force intended, I have in fact returned to Wisconsin--after a somewhat leisurely journey through Virginia and southern Ohio, with frequent stops to see tourist sites my mother and I have passed by on more purposeful trips over the past 18 months. The theme was, unintentionally, presidential deathbeds (Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all passing away peacefully at their homes at Mt Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier, plus a stop at Ford's Theater in D.C.). We also got to explore Mound City, Serpent Mound, and the Adena Mansion (which upon reflection is I think the source of the name of the early Adena moundbuilding culture) around Chillicoethe, Ohio.

I've been back in Wisconsin for about just over 3 days now. This house is much more peacefully quiet than the apartment in D.C.--although I miss my desk, as handling a laptop charging cord while contorted on the living room couch is a different sort of experience. Well, a desk and a bookshelf are all that is lacking to convert the spare room into an Official Writer/Editor office.

Speaking of writing/editing: I've had a new publication in Issue #24 of Neo-Opsis magazine. "Sibial' in Exile" is a story about loss, grief, and, well, exile. It's tempting to consider whether it reflects on the twinges of D.C.-homesickness I've been experiencing on occasion this past week (a little weird, given I've just done a literal homecoming), but honestly? I think it's glummer than that. Sibial' was drafted as someone I loved was dying, which I think is key to understanding it. Not all science fiction is a metaphor. But sometimes science fictional events are parallels to real life ones. Anyway, besides being in some very strange was autobiographical (but then, I suppose every story is, if we'll use the term so liberally) "Sibial' in Exile" is also the opening of a wider range--not precisely a series, but a number of stories sharing this background.

I have a few more of those stories on my to-write list for the summer. Also on my to-write list are a series of blog posts about writing and editing, including a master list of writing resources that couldn't quite fit into the Starter Guide for Professional Writers. Then come the book reviews, thanks to rich windfalls from both LibraryThing and Goodreads giveaways. An ARC of Half a King is my first introduction to Joe Abercrombie, and while I feared he'd be grimdark along the lines of George R.R. Martin or even Richard K. Morgan, his characterization is actually very...well, not lighthearted, but with an essential underlying compassion that is very refreshing and extremely engaging. I'll be checking out more by him for sure.

"The Witch Hunter's Account" in Nameless Magazine

Nameless Digest Issue #3 contains, among many other fine stories, my "Witch Hunter's Account."

Like "The Astrologer's Telling," published in Daily Science Fiction last month, "The Witch Hunter's Account" was inspired by one of Lovecraft's favorite authors, Arthur Machen, and is also a response to Lovecraftian cosmic horror, again with fewer tentacles and, I like to think, less xenophobia than Lovecraft. Hmm, actually, scratch that bit on the xenophobia (although I'm sure a conversation could get started on the refugee themes in "Astrologer's Telling." It may not have been a conscious screw-you to Lovecraft's intolerance, but I'd be tickled if people read it as such). No, Witch Hunters aren't exactly known for their open-armed acceptance of difference.

In "Harmony," a story published in Kaleidotrope Issue #8 some years back, I made my first attempt to hash out a dichotomy or Harmony/Discord--not good/evil or order/chaos, but rather permissive-of-life-as-we-know-it/utterly-inimical. It's not that Discord is objectively bad (there is no objectivity), it's just...very easily made uncomfortable for us squishy organic lifeforms. But even here it's not a clean cut. Because sometimes we want the rules of the universe to work differently, at least for a short while. A lot of the themes in "Harmony"--including the seductiveness of Discord and the "they who hunt monsters" elements hinted at beneath the surface--are further developed & examined in "The Witch Hunter's Account." Plus I got the chance to develop the culture of colonized, terraformed 31st century Mars, a place I certainly hope to return to with later stories.

An excerpt from "The Witch Hunter's Account":

Just before dawn—the dossier said she was an early riser—I drove up the cliff-hugging pink gravel road. The gates opened at my name although I knew I wasn't expected, and I parked in a courtyard shaded by some of the most luxurious growth I had seen on Mars. A housekeeper, dressed in smart black, was passing a sprinkler over a bed of poppies in the shade of a vast palm.     
"Go right in, Mr. Saye," she said. "The gate announced you. Ms Mao will see you in her study, right at the end of the hall."     
The inside of the house was as comfortable and modest as the exterior, though again overgrown by plants spilling from urns and troughs set before windows, on tables, and even directly on the plush burgundy carpet, staining it with water around their bases. The hall was permeated with an unnerving feeling of good health. I hurried to the door at the end of it, and it swung open at my touch. Also unnerving, the way every door and gate seemed to yield to me.    
 The study wall opposite the door was taken up by a vast window overlooking the sea. A pale Martian sunrise polished the waves, and it was a moment before I looked away from the sight to see the woman standing at a narrow bookcase.     
"Ms Mao?" I said.     
She turned to me, sliding a book back onto the shelf. Theophania Mao had a slender body and a round face, unlined save for softening wrinkles at the corners of her dark eyes. Her hair, onyx-black, hung to her chin in a style graceful in its plainness. Her long red dress was tailored in the fashion of a business suit.     
"Mr. Saye," she said, "would you like to sit down? And you would mind if I called you Jonathan?"     
Of course, she must have thought I was a client. A patient, I corrected myself—the file Edith Zann sent me said she didn't charge for her miracles.     
But she did call them "miracles." I took a seat with my back to the window.     
She pulled up a chair and sat across from me. "Can I get anything for you? Coffee? Wine? A glass of water?"    
 "No, thank you." I realized I still wore my hat and removed it, with a nod of apology, wondering what about this case was making me so nervous.    
 "Are you certain?"    
 She asked with such insistence that I said, "Water would be fine, thank you."     
She buzzed the order into her intercom with a small smile. The knotting in my gut unraveled, then rewound itself, as I considered her. She plainly enjoyed offering a helping hand, if only by offering refreshment to a stranger at her door. She had a generous spirit, the air of a person born for service. It disarmed me—while I knew some fell into Discord for noble reasons, it was academic knowledge; the only crusaders I had met were like Zann, on our side.    
 "I have something to ask you, Ms Mao," I said.     
She bent forward in her chair. "Yes?"     
"I want to know how you do your healing."     
Her eyes lowered, and she sat back like a reprimanded child. Her voice was firm but also apologetic as she said, "I can't teach you how to do it."     
I shook my head. "I don't need to know for myself, ma'am. I'm curious about your own method."    
 Her eyes narrowed. Anyone who might have taken her eagerness to help as a sign of weakness—or naïveté—would have been corrected by that look. "Why?"    
 "I have some interest in science," I said. "I'm slowly forming a theory of how things perceived as miraculous—like your healing or Miguel Chapman's levitation and walking on water—"  
 "Miguel Chapman's performances," she said, "are all charlatanism."       
"I'm not so sure, ma'am. Either way, I'd like to see examples of your work, and try to fit it into established science."

"The Astrologer's Telling" up at Daily Science Fiction

...charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.

Ever since I first encountered that nightmare image, from H.P. Lovecraft's prose-poem "Nyarlathotep," I have wanted to write a story about the stars going out. A morbid urge? Absolutely. But there's a certain virtue in morbidity; it makes me thoughtful and perhaps compassionate, if that's a thing a writer of apocalyptic fiction can be.

And so "The Astrologer's Telling" comes from a different philosophy than Lovecraft's more nihilistic landscape.I hope it proves, as well as terrifying and mournful, perhaps a little inspiring. I spent some time worrying about the science of kindling and extinguishing stars, before I at last embraced the fact that my interest was much less scientific than artistic and emotional. And I hope the story is more impactful for it.

About this time last year, this story received an Honorable Mentions in the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing (whew! I've never been able to write the full name without looking it up). I am very grateful to Rick Wilbur and Sheila Williams for constructive commentary after the contest.

Where You Can Get the Starter Guide for Professional Writers

I'm happy to announce that The Starter Guide for Professional Writers is now available at most online retailers!

The Starter Guide for Professional Writers contains everything to know so that you can begin earning money for your writing. Ten chapters address every stage of writing, revising, releasing, and promoting your first (or second, or third) published story, including what you need to: 

• Defeat writer's block and finish your story 
• Revise to make the strongest manuscript possible  
• Find markets for your writing and keep track of your submissions 
• Concisely and engagingly describe your story to agents, editors, and readers 
• Query agents, submit to a small press, or self-publish 
• Avoid scammers disguised as agents and publishers 
• Advertise your work with everything from an author's website (and learn who actually reads your blog!) to promotional bookmarks with the help of a full marketing plan 

The Starter Guide offers an on-the-ground view of publishing and focuses on using inexpensive resources (after all, writers should make money off their writing, not pay for it!). Covering everything from how best to use a thesaurus to how to handle editor deadlines, its holistic perspective builds skills writers will use at every stage of their careers.

Throughout, I try to explain how things look from a complete beginner’s perspective, maintaining a conversational, and in places even humorous, style. I hope this holds your attention and keeps you from feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff there is to know about publishing. Even I was surprised by how much I had to share once I started writing!

The paperback, printed through CreateSpace, and the Kindle version are available through Amazon and its international sites:
Amazon.com
Amazon.com (Print)
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com.au
Amazon.de 

For those of you resisting Amazon's creeping tyranny over the world--or who simply, like me, own a Nook--the Starter Guide is also at Barnes and Noble.

And in the iTunes bookstore!

You can download the ebook in virtually all formats directly from Smashwords, too.

Because Createspace gives a more generous royalty rate for direct purchases, I figured I'd pass some of that generosity on to you. If you pick up a copy of the Guide through the Createspace store, use the discount code A4ZBCGSH for $2.00 off the cover price.

I'm also offering ebook downloads of the Starter Guide as part of a gig on Fiverr.com--a great place to look if you're also interested in picking up my editorial services on the cheap!

The Guide is also on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Smashwords will continue to distribute copies of the Guide to other retailers, and I intend to update this post as new links go live. If you've seen a link in the wild, or noticed one of the ones I've posted here isn't working anymore, please shoot me an email or let me know in the comments. Thanks so much!

Veterans of Future Wars release

My short story "Ayema's Fleet" has been reprinted in the Veterans of Future Wars anthology from Martinus Publishing. As with the Battlespace anthology "Ayema's Fleet" first appeared in, VFW is for a good cause--10% of proceeds from the anthology go to Disabled American Veterans.

I've done an interview with anthology editor Martin T. Ingham, which can be read here. And the anthology itself is available in print and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

One Year Later

I started this blog on February 9, 2013. Reading back over my first few posts, it's tempting to think about how far I've come since then.

Clever, hardworking college graduate seeks job...finds one? 

When I started Story Addict, I had just moved to Washington, D.C. for one last semester before graduation. Like most new graduates, I was concerned about making the shift to a young professional. To be honest, I still am. And I'm still feeling out the specifics. Over the past year, I have experience with the "grown up" workplace--I've worked as a Knowledge Management intern writing case studies that went to the Inter-American Development Bank, I've managed social media and offsite sales for a Fair Trade boutique, and I've learned more about the life of a social media, writing, & editing freelancer. Which I'm doing right now. I've found that I love the process of editing--and I'm really good at it--plus I enjoy the freedom of freelancing, being able to set my own hours and work on a wide variety of unique and interesting projects.

Currently I'm considering going for a copyeditor's certificate (while I can proofread basic grammar usage, I am primarily a word choice and developmental editor, and have not yet internalized Strunk & White nor any specific style guide). If I do choose to work as a freelance writer and editor fulltime--effectively leaving my DC job search in the nonprofit sphere--I'll probably move back to Wisconsin. There's no reason to sustain a Washingtonian cost of living when I telecommute. There are plenty of contacts I'll want to maintain--not to mention friends, who I will really miss. Part of the reason I've put off thinking seriously about moving back is how much I've enjoyed building a social circle in Washington. It's a delightfully geeky, brainiac social circle. But I have geeky friends at home, too, and I know members of my family remaining in Wisconsin would like to have me closer, especially after the difficult year 2013 was.

2013 was also a year of travel--my first time in a foreign country, as well as lots of hopping around to California, the Midwest, and one trip to Las Vegas (for a funeral, unfortunately). Keeping friends on every side of the continent will be earning me frequent flier miles in the future, to say the least, but I am really okay with that. It'd probably be the decent thing for me to start buying carbon offsets, though, after what I've learned about carbon emissions in the Washington Semester.

Writing and Crowdfunding

Hopping back to the writing: even as I interned this summer, I spent a lot of time focused on writing projects and communication. This perhaps should have been a hint. My two big projects of last year were crowdfunding campaigns, two of which earned more than $1,000 each--a charitable one through IndieGoGo, and crowdfunding for self-publishing the Starter Guide through Kickstarter. Then, of course, writing the Starter Guide. I've average about 150,000 written words a year since high school, and 2013 was no exception, but 97,000 of those words were in the Starter Guide. I wrote only a handful of short stories--but the ones I did write, I enjoyed extremely. Plus I did a lot more nonfiction writing than usual (unless school assignments count--and I won't have to do those again for a while!), including 74 posts on this very blog!

Meanwhile, I also dabbled in romance--under a separate name, as usual, which I try to keep disassociated from this one. This means as much as half of what I'm doing with writing happens "under the water," so to speak, and this blog is only the tip of a very deep iceberg indeed.

News on a Series of Series
When I first started this blog, it was partly to keep track of three (or four?) series of interconnected stories. All of these series are close to completion, with only a handful of stories left to go in each.

A Dark and Wonderful History still has 4 more stories to write--two more than I had in February 2013. The reason for the apparent backslide is that my concluding piece, "Sanction," was broken into two, with less pressure on either half (trying to combine shapeshifters, Fascists, a crumbling monarchy, minor miracles, and angels into one story was becoming strained). "The Imperial Engine" will be taking up some of the burden. I still haven't finished the Frankensteinean historical "Homunculus' Mother," either, and I now have on last story to fill in the gap that comes after "The Godslayer's Wife." Finally the Godswar will be told, by a woman who adds a refreshing perspective, I hope, to round out the cast of this series.

I finished one more story in Across the Curse-Strewn World--"For Lost Time," which was sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies for publication sometime in 2014. Just this past month I've completed the third and final story, "The Grace of Turning Back." I still have two more stories, prequels of sorts, to round it out, plus a short/flash fiction taking place in the same world. Writing "The Grace of Turning Back" may have made me cry at a few points. Meanwhile, "For Lost Time" includes a journey to the Kingdom of the Dead, a nation in exile, and an entertaining digression on who people do and do not dance with.

I haven't gotten very far with Heart's Kindred at all, and the series is on a back burner for now. I did sell some of the completed stories in the series--"An Honorable Aunt" to Silver Blade and "Through the Father Range" to Alban Lake. I have one short story ("Uncle Ouvin") and two novellas to finish, all big propositions with many new and old characters and several crucial decision points for protagonists Rathan and Anweth. Plus, I'm not quite sure how to defeat the monster in "Ouvin" yet, even with the help of the two spymistresses.

A fourth short series, "Wizards Among Us" (as I've nicknamed my collection of stories setting "in this world or slightly askew"), received a bit of love as I reworked "The Family." I've also touched at wider worldbuilding issues for several individual stories. I may release the full collection in an ebook in a few years--time will tell. In 2013 I also worked on a number of science fictional stories and saw publications in venues like Daughters of Icarus, Perihelion, and Scigentasy. As I may have forgotten to mention, "The Astrologer's Telling," which received an honorable mention in the Dell Magazines Undergraduate Excellence, has been accepted for forthcoming publication from Daily Science Fiction! 

I haven't written any new stories in the setting of One Hundred Days (I do have one yet unpublished, "Close Study," which shows some backstory of a crucial character in the novel and introduces one character I just really like a lot). I did complete on-paper revisions, and am currently making my way through something like the third-and-a-half draft. This, I tell myself, as I do each February, will be the year I really, really finish it.

I did reprint a number of stories last year, and I hope to do some more in 2014. If you find any "dead links" in my Publications List, do send me a note and I'll amend them.

By the way, if you're interested in One Hundred Days, The Starter Guide for Professional Writers, or my short stories, you can arrange to get email updates on their publication status by asking to hear "When Your Next Book Comes Out" through my Newsletter.

Last but hardly least, I've made it to Level 10 in GetYeDone, though I've recently stopped listing minor tasks on the website in favor of tracking them on paper.

Monday

The Starter Guide ebook rewards to my crowdfunding campaign supporters have been sent out! I expect to receive the proof print copy later this week and complete my spot-check for typos in a bout of feverish editing.

Speaking of feverish editing, I've been so wrapped up in the Guide and other projects that I missed the date when my story went live at the Lorelei Signal!

In the Lorelei Signal's Quarter 1 Issue, "In the Mirror" appears in print for the first time since its debut in Silver Blade magazine in 2009. I appear alongside a great TOC, including not least my sister Megan's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." And check out the marvelous artwork by Marge Simon!




The combined content of the Lorelei Signal and Sorcerous Signals, WolfSinger's two online magazines, appear in print together in Mystic Signals, which is now available through the Createspace store.

The Starter Guide for Professional Writers is Complete! Completely Complete!

After a grueling morning formatting session, I am pleased to announce that the Starter Guide for Professional Writers has been submitted to CreateSpace for approval and will be going to the Kindle Store, Smashwords, and Omnilit within the next few days.

I'm mostly exhausted, but also pretty pleased.

Because of a number of illustrations among the text, I have to do the ebook formatting very carefully--wish me luck! But the print files are as clean as I can make them, and no errors have turned up in the autocheck process. The files will be approved within the next 24 hours, or sent back to me for yet more formatting. Fingers crossed.

I'm genuinely sorry and frankly embarrassed at the length of time it has taken me to complete writing, editing, and formatting this book. Yet I am also reminded how likely we are to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. A year ago today I had no clue I would ever write a guide to publishing! And completing and editing a 97,000 word manuscript within seven months is actually the fastest I've ever worked! 

Thanks are in order once again to all of my crowdfunding campaign donors--your reward copies are my first priority as the book goes to press. 

News for the New Year

It seems absurd to get jet lag from the 1-hour flight from Milwaukee back to DC, even if the flight did include a harrowing forty five minutes waiting on the runway for nonspecific technical anomalies to be repaired. But I've definitely been feeling laggy these first few days of 2014. But never mind. The sun is up, a sudden rain last night washed away every spot of snow in the District (this is downright creepy to a Midwesterner), and I'm sort of up for blogging.

I hadn't been homesick much in 2013, but after 2 weeks back in Wisconsin in which I got to reunite with friends and family I haven't seen enough of, it's strange to be so far away from them. Maybe that's part of the 'lag' I'm feeling. Happily, I have the internet and Skype.

Before 2013 was over, I got to go rock climbing, experiment in making syllabub, and unwrapped my first ereader, a Nook HD+. Yes, it's positively huge for an ereader, but that means I can go through PDFs and browse the internet--though I'm trying to keep that latter distraction to a minimum. 'Paging' through ebooks by tapping the touchscreen rather than scrolling will be a welcome relief to my scrolling finger, which has gotten downright achy during my past few manuscript reviews.  Using Calibre, I've also been able to convert MS Word documents into .epub files, which meant I got to read a manuscript while stranded on the runway in Milwaukee. At least the time wasn't completely wasted!

Progress on Starter Guide revisions and formatting continues, including more research and practice with the use of Calibre for converting files. I also have a few more notes to make on ebook marketing from the reader's perspective (I've read something like 20 of them since Christmas, which is downright rapid even for me).

I also have new goals for 2014. High on the list is the completion of revisions to my novel, One Hundred Days, which I'll start work on as soon as the Starter Guide is finished. I'm also making significant progress on my short story series Across the Curse-Strewn World, featuring the sorcerer Aniver, his companion Semira, and their quest to rescue a city lost to rogue Time. The next installment, "For Lost Time," is forthcoming from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, where "The Storms in Arisbat" appeared in 2012. I'm currently writing the last chapter of Aniver and Semira's story...as well as the first, a novella about exactly what happened in the Glass-Clear Sea. I'm also writing a short piece about the Queen of Yesterday that might form a sort of prequel to the core trilogy of Arisbat-Lost Time-and the third story, currently known as "The Grace of Turning Back."

Usually I laugh at authors who claim to have trouble writing terrible things happening to their protagonists, but I have to tell you, "Grace" is difficult and I want to write Aniver and Semira letters of apology. I can't wait to finish. Muahaha--sob sob.

But all is not grief and loss (fictional or otherwise). In fact, with the help of Grace or otherwise, some things do return. One of those returning things is "Charismatic," a science fiction piece that first appeared in Crossed Genres Issue #21 [Invasion] and has since lapsed out of print. It has, however, been accepted for reprinting by a new magazine, Ares, which combines science fiction and gameplay in each issue. Ares is currently running a Kickstarter to fund their first year, with perks that might be of special interest to gamers--getting your face on custom designed game cards, for instance!

"The Queen's Arrival" in Liquid Imagination, and a Christmas Gift Idea

My mythic fantasy piece "The Queen's Arrival" has been reprinted in Liquid Imagination Issue #19.

It's actually been up nearly a week, and I apologize for posting the link so late--though as you can see, things have been busy. I've only just got around to making my Christmas card & gift list and am starting to scrape together time, ideas, and money to fulfill it.

Speaking of which:

If you're lost on gift ideas for a writer in your life--surely they don't need another journal (that just means they have to start another story to put in it!)--consider getting them a manuscript edit, to be redeemed any time after Christmas!

Email me and we can arrange for a wordcount-based edit ($5/1000 words, or around $25 for a short story or up to $300-$400 for a novel), to be done on a piece of the recipient's choice. If you like I can even design a gift card for you to print out or email them.

I will be at my gentlest, yet nonetheless thorough, helping the writer develop their craft and their manuscript to the next level. It's a gift that will keep on giving!

The Starter Guide for Professional Writers should be released soon, but may not make it to wide distribution in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, if you're looking for books either as gifts or as ebooks to download onto your new E-Reader (guess what yours truly is getting!), I'd be eternally grateful if you checked out Aqua Vitae and other publications.

Story up at Perihelion! "Equations in the Mirror"

My science fiction story "Equations in the Mirror" is up at Perihelion Science Fiction. This is one of the few stories that ever required me to whip out a calculator (another is Ayema's Fleet in the Battlespace Military Science Fiction anthology) and was based on a number of cool medical techniques I'd learned about. Being for a time a Paleolithic history/pre-history fan, I was delighted to learn that obsidian stone blades are still used by surgeons in the modern day. The idea of dark glass and dark reflections tied in with other, more unsettling medical advances in cosmetic surgery.

That math I did involved taking measurements of my own face (actually just one measurement: I think of the length of my lower eyelid) and then extrapolating the other numbers according to the supposed ratios of the Golden Equation as applied to the human face. You may roll your eyes (which are the perfect length, if I may say) or raise your eyebrows (wonderfully proportioned--not to be creepy), but for what it's worth, some cosmetic surgeons do claim their work has a basis in the Golden Ratio. Which is why I was more amused than stung my one of the rejection letters I've preciously received for "Equations," one that said The concept of basing cosmetic surgery on the Golden Ratio just didn't ring true...at all.

September Publications: Scigentasy and Voluted Tales

Happy Labor Day to those of you celebrating it! I'm at this moment not quite employed enough to, but I do have some exciting writing announcements.

First, Silver Chests and Plain Sight has been reprinted at Voluted Tales. Half-detective story, it may have been influenced by Peter Tremayne's delightful medieval monastic mysteries--although my cleric happens to be female. 

I also have an original story publication: A Marriage, Pure and Good is at the new Intersectional Feminist webzine Scigentasy. I've been excited about Scigentasy ever since it opened its...doors? webpages?...anyway, point stands, I am thrilled beyond belief to actually be featured in it! A Marriage also sits pretty close to my heart, being one of the first stories I wrote featuring LGBTQA themes. Particularly G and A--the protagonist is an aromantic asexual woman. There really aren't enough aro ace characters out there, so I'm excited to add to their numbers, and grateful that Scigentasy is giving me the opportunity. 

I've been featured in a lot of feminist speculative fiction publications, both recently and in the past--Scigentasy, Daughters of Icarus, The Future Fire, Warrior Wisewoman and Sword and Sorceress, and I have two reprint stories forthcoming from the new anthology series Andromeda's Offspring. Each time I approach the themes of gender, sex, choice, pacifism (nonviolence is not always tied to feminism but it is intimately tied to my own stance), identity, and relationships from a different angle. I don't always agree with myself, either! Much less with every character--although allowing them freedom of choice and identity is what lets me write fiction in the first place. I have no all-encompassing summary statement, much less a great insightful truth, to close these musings with, so instead I'll just say--I hope you enjoy reading these stories and thinking about these questions as much as I enjoyed thinking about these questions and writing these stories! 

"The Void Test" at the Cast of Wonders Podcast!

This weekend, I had one of my first stories in audio publication! 

You can now listen to "The Void Test," read by Chloë  Yates in the YA Podcast Cast of Wonders. It's a story of confronting fears, most importantly the sort of fears even ultimate power can't defeat. The text is included on the website, slightly revised from its originally appearance in MindFlights Magazine in 2008. 

Reward in Daily Science Fiction's Kickstarter! Also, Newsletters.

Daily Science Fiction is hosting a Kickstarter Campaign to pay authors for their short fiction published for the next six months, September 2013-March 2014.

Among rewards including omnibus anthologies, gourmet chocolate, and a crocheted Cthulhu, you can also sign up for a critique from Yours Truly of a short story (they say up to 5,000 words, but I wouldn't complain about longer, either)! See the details for Daily Science Fiction's Fall 2013 campaign here.

On the topic of Kickstarter campaigns and critiques, the campaign for the Starter Guide for Professional Writers has breezed past its original goal--made it more than 4x over, in fact--and is just $130 shy of the Stretch Goal. If the campaign raises $1,000, I'll have enough financial leeway to offer a half-off deal on any manuscript critiques to all my Kickstarter funders. There's a little less than a week yet to get it on that.

A last piece of news: if you check out my 'Contact' page on the right sidebar, you'll now see an embedded MailChimp form allowing you to sign up for email alerts on the publication of my short stories, books, or just life in general.

Plans for the weekend: Well, I've spent the past week touring subleases in DC, and there are one or two I really like and am following up on. Fingers crossed! And then it's on to the job search in August and September!

Fair Trade Blogger Bragging

As a college sophomore, I first realized I was interested in international advocacy. A great goal but initially hard to accomplish in a small, friendly town smack dab in the middle of the North American continent.

Except I was lucky, because I went to school in Waukesha, home of the Plowshare Center--an organization that hosts educational forums on social, economic, and environmental justice issues globally, and also runs Wisconsin's first Fair Trade store. They welcomed me on board and for my last year in Wisconsin I helped set up events, staff the booth of Fair Trade products that popped up at Fair Trade Fairs (say that ten times fast) and the Waukesha Farmer's market on weekends, and spent three memorable days repainting the inside of the store the most gorgeous shade of blue.


I was also entrusted to help stock the books for sale in the Learning Center, at last achieving my dream of running a tiny bookstore (after a fashion).

The Plowshare  ladies, as I called them to my friends and family (despite the men who are very much a part of  the center, too) were wildly supportive of my writing (they probably knocked Aqua Vitae up several thousand Amazon ranks the day they discovered I wrote a book ;D) and asked me to write some articles for the biannual newsletter. Those articles now have their own page on Plowshare's newly redesigned website!


This summer, I'm now working with another Fair Trade and peacebuilding organization--Amani, which has five centers run by women throughout Eastern Africa and a retail storefront in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. There I've been helping at pop-up shops, scheduling more offsites at DC festivals (we're especially excited about the Green Festival in September), and writing some of the posts on the Amani DC blog.

So even if you're not always hearing from me on this blog, I reassure you I am still blogging! And now you know where else to find me (and if you're looking for a place to pick up gifts, jewelry, or some adorable kid's toys, you now know 2 places to look--Amani even has an online store for anyone not currently near its stores in Washington, Kenya, Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda, or Burundi).