One of the hardest things for me to do over the last eleven years was basically turn my life inside out after my wonderful first wife died of cancer in July 2008. Spent time downsizing things in preparation to go…somewhere.

In my case, that means getting rid of something like 3,000 books. Let me put it to you this way, I used to measure my library by the hundredweight or cubic meter, depending. 3/4 of them went away. The old rule was 10% more stuff must leave the house every month than comes in. That went on for years.

Fast forward to “Fabulous Publisher Babe ™, Take Two” (that’s a story for a different time and a lot of beer). She convinced me that I could write commercially successful stuff. And she was right, as I’m a little over 13 months into retirement from the day job and supporting myself rather well.

But part of converting myself from a voracious reader to a voracious writer involved learning how to tell story. The nuts and bolts craft that goes under things, like 7 Point Plot Structure (Lester Dent) or 3 Act Plot Structure (or 2 or 4).

I began to read critically. I’m given to understand that this is part of the normal process one goes through, as you can’t turn the brain off and just enjoy the story, because lizard-brain at the back is analyzing constantly.

Plus, I had gotten rid of most of my books, so the ones I kept were the ones I liked and I have a hard time even reading some of those. Instead, I’ve taken up histories, biographies, and related non-fiction.

Recently, I picked up my copy of “The Dragon Never Sleeps” by Glen Cook. I had all of the Black Company books at one point, but only ended up keeping the Books of the North. Had others, but he likes to play games with a series reader that I find distasteful bordering on unethical, so only four titles survived the cut and I won’t buy any new ones he puts out.

Started re-reading this one because I want to steal some of those grand and magnificent ideas he dreamed up, for a project I’ve been planning for several years, but I had to put it on the shelf and walk away for now. Got the tidbits I needed, rather than the whole story, so that was enough. (Critical voice, but there were other issues.)

But all the mentors I listen to keep telling me I have to read in order to write. Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Steven Barnes.

So after the morning writing session, I decided to play hooky. Got about 3500 words of the normal goal of 4000, but brain needed a break. Drove in to Enumclaw and hit the bookstore. “The Sequel Books” The owners are friendly, and we talk business.

Today, got myself the usual mocha, chatted with them for a bit, and wandered back to the shelves for a deep dive into SFF for the first time in many years. B&N’s SFF selection is shrinking in size and relevance every year. Partly, because SF is less and less and F is growing as an overall share.

(Personally, I think SF and F should be separated into their own thing, like Mystery or Romance have done, because Fantasy tends to bore me with its predictability these days. There appear to be three or five general stories, and the only difference seems to be the gender of the heroic character, and who ends up being the dragon. But I digress.)

Stood there drinking my mocha and starting with A. Ignored folks who had published so long ago that I looked at them in the 80’s or were dead of old age. Not because I don’t like them, but brain wanted fresh inspiration, and the world of literature had changed.

Oversized paper books (trade paperback, sort of) tend to be Indie or Special Edition, so brain locked on those as I scanned. I’m looking for big SF, with Big Space Idea, rather than Science of Discovery stories (where an ordinary scientist makes an earth-shattering discovery and everyone tries to kill him to get/suppress it, usually. Those have turned into Thrillers today, for the most part).

What I have found, for doing this consciously since that time four years ago at Powell’s books which caused me to write Auberon in the first place:

• I will popcorn-kitten like mad, just reading titles or good blurbs. I emailed myself two whole new series ideas, just shopping today. Schedule TBD
• I have to just find things at random, buy them, and then start reading, rather than open the book after reading the blurb, because page one might shut me down. It’s the inspiration of the ideas being explored that fuel me, rather than the story itself.
• Concepts that sound interesting, but which I have some expertise, tend to turn me off, because one of the series I looked at was so far from able to suspend my belief that I had to put it back. Writer-brain would be “Just how the hell do they recreate all the technological tools necessary to even operate in that place?”
• Star Wars qualifies as Space Opera SF, even though many people consider it Space Fantasy. But depending on who you ask, FTL makes a story Space Fantasy, when they demand to look down their noses at people who don’t write “hard science science fiction.” (Much of which is technologically perfect, and boring as shit, which is why Andy Weir surprised the hell out of me by making such a fun story. He, however, tends to prove the rule.)
• We live in an age where cyberpunk still beckons, as does Apoc and Post-Apoc, but I still tend to prefer FTL/Space, however you get there. Aliens (which is another thing hard science pricks say makes it fantasy rather than scientific. GFY, bubbles.) give me the chance to wonder around in a whole different viewpoint that us.
• I want entertaining and detailed stories. I recently had to stop about halfway through one of those “Year’s Best SF” collections or whatever the title was, because the editor liked great ideas, and really didn’t care if the story made any sense or contained any wallpaper. As in, the female main character that I couldn’t tell if she was 14 or 44, even after reading it?
• A character. In a Setting (which includes a lot of Voice and not just random thesaurus output). With a PROBLEM. Try/Fail. Denouement.
• My mentors hammered me hard on developing rich characters with interesting foibles, beliefs, and fears, rather than “Just Another Chosen One” story. Villains that are more than cardboard scenery chewers. Places you go “huh” as you think about.

So I bought myself four books today, and only made it as far as M in the time I allotted myself. Two of them appear to be Books One, so I might have the store order me sequels if they turn out to be any good. None of them are people I know, with the exception of Vonda McIntyre, whom I have never read before. (My SF background was WAY different than most of you, let’s just say that.) But I want to read more folks, and her story struck me as something that looked fun. Plus, Vonda was a most gracious and wonderful woman the few times I met her in person. (My wife knows EVERYBODY, I think.)

So wish me luck. I’ll try to remember to post book reviews and links if I get through them. (The most interesting thing I have learned to handle better is that many books might be perfectly good, and I’m just not the reader for them. Or maybe someone is just not my writer.)

So what are you folks reading to stretch your minds?

Heya,

This is the reminder to tell your friends, if they haven’t already done so, to rush right out and buy the latest Space Opera Storybundle. Book One of the CS-405 trilogy is in there (Queen Anne’s Revenge) and Book Two (Packmule) is already out, with Book Three (Persephone) coming in just a few days.

They’ll get themselves seven novels. Two separate three-novel collections. Plus a Fiction River Presents for a very amazing price.

For the rest of you, I’m going to just pretend that you’ve already purchased Packmule and given me one of those nice reviews I read to cheer myself up. And that you have Persephone on pre-order so it will just magically appear in your device listing overnight Tuesday/Wednesday.

And then the countdown is on to Winterhome! May 10. Have you got your calendar marked? I have gone places even my first readers were surprised and excited with Winterhome. And the last scene from Persephone comes in about midway through Winterhome, lacing everything back together so you are fully prepared for all the insanity about to erupt onto an unsuspecting galaxy.

But first, you gotta read CS-405. Start with the storybundle. Move on quickly. Time’s running out for you to get an amazing deal and keep yourself entertained for a few days while you wait to see what happens to Jessica Keller next!

So it was probably inevitable. The world keeps changing, and as artists, we all have to change constantly to keep up. And that’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong.

Today, that means that I finally had to pull the trigger on setting up my own Patreon creator account. I’m late to the story, but lots of other people I know have done their own patreons, and been successful at it. I’m leaving money on the table that frankly could help me be more successful as a writer.

So I talked to several folks about what to do. These are early days for me, and I’m still figuring it all out, but here’s the pitch.

PATREON!!

Every month, I will dig into the backlog of short stories I have, and post one up for everyone at the right level. Right now, that’s more than a dozen stories nobody has ever seen, including three new Science Officer shorts that are part of Season Two (Book Nine when I finally start publishing them again.)

Starting on May 1, The Unbloomed Rose will be available to all my backers, which may or may not include the thirteen people out there who have ever actually seen it. There are two others that I will intersperse after that, with some other stuff and things.

I write mostly science fiction, but there is also some sword and sorcery fantasy in there, including extensions of existing bits I published back when, before SF took off. One Alicia story that picks up her thread. I also wrote a short story that probably needs to be chapter 1 (or prologue, maybe) to a whole Urban Fantasy novel or series. Dunno. Not my comfort zone, but some days the words refuse to not be written, so I had to tell their story. And the rest is in my head and my notes. Seriously. Urban Fantasy. WTF?

But you’ll get to read a new Science Officer short, before anybody else. And some other as well.

My plan is that I won’t actually publish anything that goes up to patrons for at least six months. Maybe longer. Dunno. Still trying to figure it all out. Any constructive advice useful.

Maybe, I’ll do a Patreon collection later, just so you know you already have it and don’t need to buy it again, before individual pub. But you’ll be helping me make a little money on the side so I can afford to take a few more risks. Like publishing an urban fantasy novel that might actually sell, if you folks enjoy it well enough to encourage more. And more fantasy, just so I explore those lands as well. I don’t go down those paths because SF pays the bills and I don’t want to damage that.

But I am also writing at Pulp Speed Two right now (100,000+ words per month), so I’m generating novels on a monthly basis. My short fiction just doesn’t get priority on publication. I just finished a novel yesterday that is scheduled to be published March 2020. And I’m on to the next one today. Them’s novels, mind you. Book five in a series none of you have even heard of yet.

But we’re going to do the Patreon thing, and hopefully we can make it work. Your assistance, support, forbearance, and whatever else would be welcome.

Let’s dive facefirst into the future.

So this wasn’t the blog post I had originally planned to write, but I had unexpected company last night at dinner time and it sort of threw everything sideways. We had just pulled a pair of lovely steaks and were letting them rest when I looked up and realized that an elk was walking over the rise from the middle meadow.

Ten point buck. Just meanders up as we’re eating. A few minutes later, the matriarch of the herd appears. Lucky for me, I have a buffet table ready for such folks at all time.

Over the next twenty minutes, a whole bunch more arrived. All total, I counted seventeen head, including a spike buck with two single horns about 18 inches tall each, plus a couple of males with just little nubs for horns, so I presume they are a year old.

Never had that many elk standing around, to be able to tell the genders part by the color of their fur. Boys are much lighter on the flanks and top, while much darker on the belly than the women. Helps when you have that many boys bouncing around.

So they just kind of grazed for about an hour before they meandered off down the hill to the left.

Kitty, however, wasn’t too sure about all this silliness, even when she got up on her shelf to look at them. She’ll boop deer through the sliding glass door, but them elk are strange looking, like vultures with hair on the neck. She was not impressed.

At one point, one of the females was walking along, next to the box where all the fruit trees are. I wish I’d had the camera out, but it was in my pocket.

I have wires that hold the posts on the box upright. And I have covered them with duct tape to mark them so I don’t clothesline myself when I’m mowing. Because wire at a sixty degree angle, covered with a dark green rubber finish.

She walked right into the middle of the tape, right where it looks like a flag. Bounced right backwards with the most embarrassed look on her face, turning to me, standing inside the house at the slider, as it “you didn’t see that, did you?” After a few moments, she picked up her dignity and sauntered off like she meant to do that.

One other funny thing I saw. The Matriarch was standing close to the bull, between him and another mature female. Don’t know what passed between them, but the Other Female had her butt to the Matriarch, who proceeded to take a bite of the first woman’s ass and pull out a huge tuft of fur that she dropped. Other Female got her ass gone in a hurry after that.

Those are US quarters, for scale, about an inch across. The hairs are about 5-6 inches long, dirty on the end and about as heavy and stiff as straw. Put them in a bag, just because every good fish story needs a little evidence.

Who knew that elk bite fur for pecking order?

So I never did write the other blog post I had planned. And that’s okay. If you head over to Facebook, I’ll post all the rest of the pictures I took shortly, along with several short videos.

It was a silly Friday night.

Hey, all.

As if right now, I’m part of a brand new Science Fiction story bundle and thought you might like to know more. And tell all your friends. Big group of folks I’ve never even met before, so you most likely don’t know about them either, and this is your chance to discover some new favorite authors.

Storybundle. For those of who’ve never encountered one, a bundle runs three weeks and then it is gone forever. For the base price you get four new novels, by Michael D. Britton, Robert Jeschonek,Mason Elliott, and Leigh Saunders. If you do the full asking price, you’ll get one of mine, plus five others. Ten novels, one low price, going away forever in a very short period, so you should tell all your friends about this deal, too.

So spread the word and let’s make this a big one.

Yup, you read that right.

Militant Lesbian Tree Octopus Sorceress. No, I can’t tell you where ideas like this come from. The first story is several years old now, but was kept in the can because I was working with an artist at one point to do illustrations for her. That woman’s life fell apart, and when she got it back together, she was in a different place and I never followed up with trying to find someone else.

The second story got written about a year later, so maybe two years ago now. Just as silly on the surface. Just as serious underneath when you go to really studying on the themes and ideas about what “Modern Western Fantasy” looks like. (Hint: most of it starts from the point of a Tolkien pastiche. Usually badly.)

Last summer (2018) at CampCon, the decision was made on an anthology theme of “Whimsical Beasts.” I don’t write much fantasy these days, and publish even less of it, but writer-brain engaged and said “Hey, let’s do another Akahana story.”

Okay, sure. She’s not whimsical, at least to outsiders. But I can look at other magical creatures through her eyes and let her have opinions on the topic. So I found a bunnyhawk and a catowl. Yes, seriously.

That’s the key with Akahana. She’s extremely opinionated on many topics, and  a tree octopus sees the world through much different eyes than an evolved tree shrew like me.

She’s the ex-familiar of a pretty powerful wizard dude who managed to get himself killed. She’s still not sure how she survived, but she did, and wants revenge. The only problem is that she’s no longer evil.

Whoops. So now she has to come to grips with what it means to be good. To like people, even.

Horrors.

But she’s got an interesting relationship with a god who appears on this plane as a goldfish in a giant brandy snifter. And people who need her help.

And she’s a lot of fun to write.

With that, I give you Akanaha, the eight-petaled rose.

• The Eight-Petaled Rose
• Backwards On The Way
• Second Cousins (contained in Whimsical Beasts)

Y’all have fun and let me know what you think.

If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll remember that we had a freaking monster blizzard come through a while ago. 28 inches of snow in the first two rounds, plus more after that over the course of a week. I live on 6.5 acres out in the boonies southeast of Seattle, out just past the first ridge of the Cascades. As in, I can drive to a certain spot, turn left onto the main road, and cross a weather ridge about a hundred yards in or so. Watch the temperature gauge go up or down. Watch rain or snow just stop.

It was bad enough that when the snow stopped on Monday night that I couldn’t get down my driveway in a 4×4 pickup truck until Friday, and that still involved digging my self out a few times because I high-centered on the axles. Nasty stuff. Couldn’t get my Mini Cooper out for another week after that.

Now, here’s the funny part. About 2 days before all that crap hit, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I had gone into the hardware store and bought a couple of plants. I found a five-flavor Asian Pear grafted tree. They advertise 4-flavors, and that’s the price I pay, but the arborist does this frequently enough that I know to pay attention. Plus, we got her a Jasmine vine.

But it started raining when we got home. And it got worse the next day, so I left them both in the back of the truck.

And then it started snowing. Whoops.

So I pulled both into the house and have had them both next to the sliding glass door waiting for the snow to melt and the ground to thaw out since then.

That finally happened YESTERDAY. Mind you, I still have a few inches of crusty snow in the front yard and back patches where the trees are so tall that the sun won’t hit them. And it’s sixty-five in the sun and fifty-two in the shade (just checked), so they are at least melting.

But I now have a new pear tree in the box, to go with the other two espaliers. Plus the jasmine for when the bees wake up and get to work. (Mostly Mason and a few I can’t identify, but ground dwellers, rather than hive builders.) Won’t get fruit from them this year, or the five-flavor plum that went in last fall, but I plant 3-5 years out with this stuff. At a minimum.

Kinda nice to have my interior space back, although the cat’s not sure what to make of all this. Can’t say I blame her. With all the snow everywhere, I had been putting out lots of seed for the birds, so she would sneak up and hide in the shadow of the pear tree bucket and watch the best television in the world.

But the first little bits of spring have finally awakened out here. Buds are starting to expand. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) took roses that I got her when she got home, ones that had sprouted still in the vase, and put them in potatoes and dirt yesterday. Hopefully, they’ll go feral.

I’ve got a dozen downer trees I have to deal with at some point (No today, thank you.) and work to do with the machete to clear trails. Most of the latter the deer and elk have kept up for me, so mostly I’m going to be replacing fencing and expanding coverage areas for things I don’t want my critters to gnosh on.

Past that, I have had a quiet week. She was in Vegas for the Anthology Workshop until last Thursday, and it took last weekend to mostly recover. This week was just getting back on keel. Wrote a whole new novel from nothing to done in thirteen days. As in: had the idea Sunday. Wrote what I thought was a short story Monday. Writer brain laughed, and it turned into novel #28 on Tuesday. Finished it at 48,000 words the following Friday. Sent it off to Dorn to read on a plane since he need entertainment.

Back to short fiction yesterday and today. Probably tomorrow as well, since I’m only about half done on today’s story and goofing off instead of writing more. (These words still count.)

Got major books and projects slowly coming out all this year, including two short stories that got published this last week. (Hint: if you don’t read my newsletter, you missed them.)

What are y’all doing to celebrate things on this St. Pat’s Day and into your spring?

In just a few days, the middle book in the CS-405 trilogy drops: Packmule.

Queen Anne’s Revenge centered on Siobhan and Milton, Lady Blackbeard and Stunt Dude, respectively. Going forward, you’ll see more of Heather, as she comes into her own commanding her own ship.

And then things get a little dark and crazy when you meet Imperial Flight Lieutenant Granville Veitengruber, a prisoner the team rescues, who comes with his own story.

A little darker than Queen Anne’s Revenge, on our way to completely insane in Persephone in a month.

I had fun with all three books in different ways. Queen Anne was light and silly. Packmule asks a really interesting question about the nature of total war. Persephone asks about the prices one might have to be willing to pay.

People have asked why I did it this way, as a trilogy instead of one book, and as a separate piece from the rest of the Jessica novels.

Those novels (Jessica’s) have a feel to them. A style. A vocabulary. I wanted to do something different in splitting CS-405 off on her own. At the same time, each of the three books has a different emotional signature that wouldn’t have been as obvious or fulfilling (at least to me) if they were just three acts of a single symphony.

I wanted to focus on people other than Jessica, Moirrey, Vo, Casey, and Em. Not smaller people, but smaller parts. Character actors who might just earn their SAG card in a bigger, Jessica Keller novel. Here they get to chew scenery. Blow shit up. Redneck the hell out of things for no better reason than the need to blow shit up. Go steal starships.

I got to make them people. That, for me, is the single best thing about writing. Making interesting people, with problems, likes, neuroses, and hobbies. It all goes back to Lester Dent’s classical Seven Point Plot Structure, which is the basis for modern, western storytelling. (We’ll leave off the navel-gazing of literariness, where a young woman complains that her mother didn’t understand her and nobody appreciates her genius, at least for another blog.)

• Character
• In a Setting
• With a Problem
• Try Something
• Fail
• Keep Trying until the Climax
• Denouement(the happily ever after part)

AS you’ll note, the character is the first thing. The most important thing. All setting is really just a character’s opinion about their environment, as opposed to cataloging the room from left to right, which some folks do.

Characters. Lady Blackbeard. Stunt Dude. The Professor. Ground Control. Duke Indovina. Bok and his roan mare.

By giving them three novels, they got to tell their story their way.

I’m glad that Queen Anne’s Revenge has gone over well. Thank you to everyone for your patience when we screwed up Two Bottles of Wine With a War God and Queen Anne. Hopefully you are now all sorted out. If not, reach out and I’ll make sure you have the right stuff.

You’ll need all four books to understand Winterhome in May, especially with how the Bartender and a few friends will eventually upend the entire universe. But that’s an epilogue for Book 9, Petron, in your hands in December.

If you haven’t gotten your preorder in for Packmule, first off: What the hell’s wrong with you? heh.

And go set yourself up for Persephone and Winterhome while you’re at it.

I think you’ll enjoy reading them almost as much as I did writing.

shade and sweet water

blaze

West of the Mountains, WA

Because Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) is frequently one of the editors for the WMG “Fiction River” Anthology workshop, I don’t write into it. There are other reasons, not least of which is I mostly work as a novelist these days, and shifting my brain back into that mode for a third of the year is not something I want to pursue right now.

But I’m also connected with a very broad network of folks who have never heard about the WMG workshops, so I wanted to take a moment to let the rest of you know about it.

Starting in December each year, they send out the first assignment at zero dark whatever Monday morning. This is a short story, to theme, to length, turned in by midnight the following Sunday. Seven days, write a story. Do it again the next week. Take a short break off for Xmas. Do it again in early January. Each of six weeks, find out the assignment and write a story for it.

This is for the Fiction River anthology, and is just about the only way in. (They do invite in BIG NAMES who are friends of theirs, occasionally.)

If you are a short story writer, you should consider signing up for the 2020 workshop. (The 2019 is happening in Vegas as we speak. I’m home with the kitty, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) is there being an editor this year.

You write up to six stories. Then you read ALL of them. That turned out to be 1.3 million words this year, across a messy, complicated thing.

Where the magic occurs is during the Vegas week itself. Each day, one of the editors is buying. All of them are at the front of the space, and they all six of them go through every single story submitted, talking about why this story worked or didn’t. What might have made it better. Etc. These editors include Kristine Kathryn Rusch (F&SF, and others), Dean Wesley Smith (Pulphouse magazine), Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and others. A tremendous amount of experience as editors, talking to you about your story and your craft.

You don’t get to talk. You listen. You learn. You see how the sausage it made. I’ve gone several times with my wife, just so I could be there in the evening and watch. You get to see that editing is not personal.

My favorite story was several years ago. The editor buying had written his maybes on the board, by genre, and was reviewing them. He had one SF and five Thrillers, so the one SF was just in, while he sorted through the five based on other criteria. All good stories, but he was filling in slots and flavor at that point.

They go through every single story. Rate it. Critique it. And then they buy some of them. Right there while you watch, they assemble that issue of Fiction River. I cannot stress enough how much you will learn about your craft by sitting there and taking notes.

Moreover, you will learn craft. After several years of doing pulse pounders for Kevin J. Anderson, this crew knows how to do them. I like to refer to it as an Arms Race, with these forty or sixty people stepping their craft up year over year.

If you write short fiction, you should consider taking this class.

Additionally, you will meet professionals. Folks doing what you’re doing, and hoping to network with one another. I was able to build Boundary Shock Quarterly because I knew about half the folks in my Syndicate as a result of bribing them with baked goods at previous anthology workshops.

(Sideline: When we did it in Lincoln City, Or, I had a day job, and took a week off. While they were at the workshop, we had filled the entire Anchor hotel up, every room, so they would lock the front doors and left me alone with my own industrial kitchen. Plus a fantastic bar I could stand behind while writing. Cookies, brownies, whatever I felt like making, and the hauling over for the workshop to eat. Don’t do that in Vegas, for all the normal reasons. Planning to go next year, just to see folks.)

If you want to meet pros, you need to be in Vegas with them. These are Hugo winners, Derringer winners, Rita winners. Big time folks that you can learn from, even as you get together to write.

Share the word with your friends, because folks will be signing up for next year starting this week and the class fills by summer. If you have questions, or they do, send them my way and I’ll find you answers.

There are not many opportunities you will ever get to be part of something like this, and to learn so much along the way.

🙂

Because I apparently did not reach everybody when the novella Two Bottles of Wine With a War God came out with the wrong interior in January, I’ve gotten a few complaints from folks (and a bad review, apparently) about reading the same book twice.

I appreciate that folks might be a little upset, and it’s my fault. I’ve tried to send out enough notes to everyone, and Amazon should have sent you a message that there was a correction issued, once they had the corrected file in place, so you should have been able to download a corrected version of Two Bottles. In both cases, if you reread, you actually got a chance to read Queen Anne’s Revenge a month early.

However, if you are still having problems with the files (and a few of you did when trying to pull the new Amazon file down), please let me know and I’ll send you a free download link to get a proper copy of Two Bottles.

I’d rather have happy fans than worry about it, and thanks to everyone who pointed it out, and for your patience as we got this all sorted out last month.

In brighter news, it is now March, and the second book in the trilogy comes out in a little more than a week. We left off with the adventures on the bridge of the new ship being captured by Stunt Dude and his crew of lunatics. (Love you much, Gerry.)

Packmule picks up from there with the crew of CS-405 trying to find their way home. First, however, something comes up, and they have to make a detour that will forever alter the nature of the war between Buran and the rest of the galaxy.

To be concluded in Persephone on April 10.

From there, the story meets back up with things in the middle of Winterhome as the adventure climbs the scales of EPIC SCIENCE FICTION. Hope you all enjoy.