Hi friends,
While my YA Fantasy Daughter of Flood and Fury is still technically in the revision process, I thought it was good enough to enter in a few contests. And one of them--the Zebulon--chose it as first in their Science Fiction+Fantasy category! 

This is a huge boost to my confidence in the book. I already think it's among the best things I've written, but to have independent not-my-friends-and-family-who-will-love-it-because-I-wrote-it people think the same thing is great. 

Better yet, the final round is judged by professionals from the industry, and I'll have a chance to talk with them at the conference, so with any luck DOFF might get picked up for traditional publication!
 
Either way this book is coming soon to an Amazon near you, so you can give it your own rating :) Till then, if you happen to be going to Pike's Peak Writer's Conference this year, look me up. We might even have signed copies of ACHE in the bookstore!

See the full post here:

People sometimes ask me how I come up with my ideas, or how I keep them all straight. The full answer is a mess of word documents, smartphone notes, mental contexts and .txt files. 

The short answer is my desk. Not the desk itself--the paper i staple on top of the desk. Here's the one from my last project, a revision of Daughter of Flood and Fury:

The secret project I've been working on (under a pen name) is live online! Here's the blurb: 

Money won’t make you happy. But can it design machines that will?

In the energy-scarce landscape of the former US, society has turned to mood-altering nanomachines to brighten its grim reality. Like many, Lance Mireles walks the line between use and abuse, all too aware of the hypocrisy that says the difference is who can afford their nanos. Falling on the wrong side of the line, but desperate to keep ties with his straight-edge younger brother Andro, he pushes his luck once too often, and ends up disowned from family and city-state, exiled to the political outlands. Determined to make things right, but still struggling with his addiction, he stumbles on an isolated addict commune with a mysterious source of nanomachines. It looks like a second chance—but hypocrisy has found its way here too…

Meanwhile Mariela Amorgera realizes all is not well in the city: someone is manipulating the nanomachines’ programming to influence behavior. Along with Lance's straight-edge brother Andro she mounts a desperate attempt to save her home and family from being enslaved to its own dependence—too late. With the entire city hostage to their nanos and society falling apart, Lance must summon his outlaw community to save his family and home—if he can first save himself.

This book was a ton of fun, from winning the writing contests to recording the audiobook to the reviews it's been getting online--and we may have a promotion coming up soon! Stay tuned, or buy it here in paperbook, electric or audio! 

Like, a lot of books. In my defense: 
1) Books are worthy investments. 
2) Paolo Bacigalupi was there, one of my inspirations to start writing professionally, and the more books I brought him to sign, the more minutes of conversation I could squeeze in. So now I have signed copies of The Water Knife, Tool of War, and The Windup Girl, plus some heartfelt words from an author whose career inspired mine. 
3) They had old-time Robert E. Howard. I mean yellow-paged crackling nearly-ancient-wizard-scroll-status old R.E. Howard books (including not only Conan but such hard to find tomes as The Iron Man, Almuric, and Wolfshead). For those who don't know I've got a soft spot for the pulpy sword-and-sorcery of yesteryear, and this is as authentically pulpy as it gets.
4) This winter while not writing I'm busily converting my garage into a full-blown writer's cave, and one 18' wall is to be entirely bookshelves, thus necessitating many a book, despite my already massive collection. 
5) They had old-time Analogs, including part of the original serialization of Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. It's like holding history in your hands. And how cool are they going to look featured on afore-mentioned wall-o-shelves? Every good author must first be a hardcore fan. 
6) Because I can. Isn't this what I dreamed of, spending all my allowance on the next installment of The Wheel of Time as a nerdy middle-schooler? To have endless adult money to spend on books I love? Well guess what, nerdy-former-me: we've got it now. And I used it to buy the super-geeky serialization of Jordan's Eye of the World. 
Thanks, MileHiCon. Lots of other cool things happened there too, but I had to share this pile I came home with, because I knew you, fellow reader, would appreciate it. 

This feels awesome. I'm going to throw some grains of salt on the following comment by saying I always feel like this, but... pretty sure this is the best novel I've ever written. It's also my first YA book, first first-person story, and first all-female point of view. A lot of firsts. 

And it's awesome. At least, it felt awesome. And early readers who've gone through the first few chapters say it's awesome. So I here, humbly, say this book could be awesome. 

Sadly, it still has a way to go before you can find it in your local bookstore. As in many rounds of revision, discussion, and then some time in submission to find an agent and editor. 

But all of these will only make it more awesome. In the meantime, I am looking for a few first-readers, especially if you can relate to queer or gender-fluid characters. Hit me up! 

Otherwise, sit back and wait impatiently. Aletheia is coming. 


1. And she may or may not, based on how the last scene turned out, be called Aletheia of the Iron Staff. 
2. And if you want a taste earlier than that, peep this early sketch I posted. 

If you've seen the trailers to LIFE, it looks pretty awesome: a near-future spacelab thing where they reanimate a cell from Mars--and it turns around and bites them. 

From there, the movie could have gone into an exploration of how to communicate with the alien, or how to defeat it, or a meditation about the inherent violence of life... instead, it (spoilers, but not recommending you hold your breath for this one anyway) devolved into an Alien remake, except this time the people trapped on the ship with the murderous alien don't have any good ways to fight it. From promising beginnings, LIFE basically becomes a horror-thriller about people trapped in a house with a killer loose, and doesn't end up stimulating much gray matter other than lizard brain fight-or-flight . 

On a scale of one to awesome, this is an okay: nice production value, truly scary at moments, but ultimately no well-developed characters or surprising storylines. Even their final solution to the monster sort of comes from thin air--and don't get me started on the ending. It's not quite alien-bursting-from-dead-character's-stomach, but it's almost as bad. 

Watch at your own risk. It has some cheap thrills, but I'm thinking your life-hours might be too precious to spend on LIFE. 

That's right. Like, all of them. 

Someone said all you have to do to write well is read often. I'd amend that by saying read widely, and read quality. So when the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America releases its top picks for the year, it's sort of like being handed a curated reading list. If, y'know, you think you have time to read five novels, five novellas, five novelettes, and a handful of short stories. I figured, I don't have much going on this month (just getting married and buying a house), I can read those. 

So here we go. Anybody want to join in? I need a better reading partner than Reddit. 

PS Yes, I know James SA Corey isn't on the Nebulas this year. But the first three books in their series have been so good, I couldn't help ordering the fourth as a palate cleanser. And, they deal tangentially with real nebulas, so. 

Fellow Readers, 
Sometimes even if you don't drink and it's the middle of the day you need to have a damn toast. Now is one of those times: after revising the first book of The Resonant Saga three times in the last two years, I again this fall decided it wasn't where I wanted to be. So I jumped in again, and this time ripped out and totally rewrote 40% of it, about 60,000 words over the course of four months. Which you have to understand, if those words were some of your darlings and highly polished and mostly good, is a painful process. 
But, I look at it like getting a tooth pulled: painful, but it needed to happen. And i think I've magically slipped a new tooth in will fit even better, in addition to being sharp as knives. So it's time for a toast, if nothing else then to dull the pain ;) 
And after that, the much-dreaded querying process to see if someone wants to buy this from me! In the meantime, if you're curious, check out the deleted scenes I have posted here--plenty more where they come from--and tell me what you think! 

Just updated the progress bar on The Resonant Saga to nearly done--and that means it's time to think of next projects! One of these is The Cursed, a new adult novel I'm working on involving sense-based magic and a contest to become the world-ending Darkbringer--read more here!
And if it sounds interesting, send me an email! I have a few slots left for pre-readers--meaning you get to read the first draft of the story, tell me what you like and what could be better, and in this case help brainstorm an ending! Pre-readers also get a promo copy of the book once it's out, and a mention in the acknowledgements--so hit me up if this sounds like something you want to do!

...when books come in the mail [1]. This week's box I'm especially excited about--let's discuss them in order of appearance:

The Neil Gaiman plus (the) Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. Can you imagine a more power-packed story-telling duo than this? No, you cannot. Nor can I--and yet, I've yet to read it. Goodbye, this week's non-writing hours.

Anthony Ryan, Blood Song. Recently discovered this UK author and fell in love with his latest work, The Waking Fire. I might still have to write a blog about it, it's so good, but think B. Sanderson magic and plotting with witty British dialogue. A must-read--and this, his first novel, gets even better reviews online, so. All the excites [2].  

Terry Pratchett, The Color Of Magic. I didn't tell the whole truth up above--it isn't even that I haven't ever read Good Omens. It's that I've never read Terry Pratchett. And basically every still-sentient SF lover I've mentioned this to informs me I'm a sinner and damned until I've read at least a few of the Discworld novels. At which point I will still be a sinner and damned, but have a sense of humor about it (can you tell I'm already on the last section of the book?)

N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate, because damn, the first book in this series rocked my socks off. Let's just make a short list: successfully told in second person; seismic magic; further narrative trickery; stellar worldbuilding; loveable unique characters; plot twists and magic oppression and love outside social boundaries. Awesome. And, I'm told, she pulls it off again and to even greater degree in The Obelisk Gate [3]. Can't wait to read it. 

If these books are anywhere near as awesome as I'm hoping, you'll probably hear about them more. Or find their stellar influences in my own writing, starting with the Aletheia project I'll be writing next month! Also, if you haven't heard and are curious, I'm looking for pre-readers for the current draft of The Cursed!

And may you have a bookfully good day too. 


[1] It's a good day when they come from the bookstore too--but i intentionally forget what books i've ordered online, and often send them slow shipping because i still have a pile of other books to read (creating a sort of deadline), so when i open that box it's a total surprise. Like getting a box of gifts from a friend who knows exactly what you've been wanting to read. 

[2] Plus, I'm like a hormone-drowned high schooler when it comes to new authors. I get crushes. I get addicted. If i like them at all i suddenly need to read everything they ever wrote, including blogs, interviews, podcasts, and bad never-published novels i find through extensive internet creeping. The list of these authors to date: Alastair Reynolds, Ken Liu, Brandon Sanderson, Daniel Abraham, and now likely Anthony Ryan. And the great thing is, you don't ever have to get rejected by them outside the west entrance of the gym and spend months moping in hormone-laden depression. You just wait for their next thing to come out and in the meanwhile, you know, maybe date some other writers. 

[3] She's also in grave danger of becoming the next author crush. And her blog served as the inspiration for this one, dear fellow reader, so if you've got a hankering for some well-written blogs swing on by.