Fellow Readers, 
It's nice now and then to read a book that takes religion seriously. I'm not much for religion personally, but it's the primary vehicle for a lot of our real-life character arcs, and I think it deserves more of a place in fiction. 
Doubly so YA, where such things usually get filed with parents and responsibility: out of the way of the protagonist who's got better things on their plate. Not so in Defy the Stars, Claudia Gray's brilliant start to her Defy the Worlds series. Not only is her opening killer, her pacing intense and romance memorable, she manages to hit deep with a character who takes her religion seriously (even as she questions it). There's also a meditation on what it means to be human buried here, embodied in the form of an android main character, and she pulls it off flawlessly. Who says YA can't get deep? 
Well, a lot of people do, actually, and if you look at most of what's sold best in the genre, you'll understand why. But if you're looking for something meatier intellectually without sacrificing a fast-paced engaging story, you could do worse than to drop a couple dollars on Defy the Stars​. (I wrote a longer review for this on Top New Fantasy--find it here). 

I'm always exhausted after a conference, in the best kind of way. This conference's best kinds of ways included meeting new and talented writerly geeks, soaking up my fifteen seconds of fame for winning the conference's writing contest, pitching to agents and editors who showed grains of interest (let's hope I've got more news to share on that later), and getting to know Mary Robinette Kowal, who along with her fellow podcasters may have more to do with my writing ability than the several degrees I have collecting dust (one of them Literature with a Writing Emphasis, mind). 
This was the first bar-con I've gone to and not felt like a total loser, or stayed at more than fifteen minutes--thanks again to MRK and her dedicated cohort of students, but also to author friends M.H. Boroson and Mike Haspil. It's nice to feel that I'm finding my way into a community of authors. Writing can be lonely as it is joyful. Especially when you're a giant (see pic below). 
That's it: Pike's Peak 2018, thank you very much. Time now to sleep. 

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.