2019 has been my best publishing year yet! I can only hope 2020 keeps the ball rolling.
I am eligible for the Campbell Award, and I am listed on the site as an eligible author. It was also just renamed the Astounding Award, though the site doesn't reflect that yet.
My scifi short story, "For Whatever We Lose", was published in Luna Station Quarterly
My fantasy short story "The Pearls That Were His Eyes" was published in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine issue #75
My steampunk short story, "One Hundred Years", was published in the Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline anthology
My scifi short story "Fundamentals of Search and Rescue" was published in Dreamforge, issue #3.
The other short stories I had out were reprints (3! reprints!) or on my Patreon. The Patreon ones are eligible, and if you are reading to nominate, I can make them available to you directly!
In total, I had 9 acceptances! One was in a dream market, Apex, that has sadly shuttered, or perhaps gone on hiatus. That story is traveling through slush piles again. I also had an anthology acceptance that will no longer be published, as that publisher has also shuttered. So hopefully 2020 is kinder to remaining and future markets!
Showing posts with label steampunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steampunk. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Friday, May 8, 2015
30 Days of D&D Day 8: Favorite Character You Have Played
(I'll do as many as I want, apparently. Every time I thought I was done with this post, I was like "no, what about...")
These are in no particular order, other than Brigid.
Monday, May 4, 2015
30 Days of D&D Day 4: Favorite Gameworld
Favorite published gameworld is a split between two I've never really played in (a single game session or two each, not games that took off): Ravenloft, and Planescape.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
A thing I run into quite frequently (read: daily) at the library is a fear of genre. It's okay to have your reading preferences; I certainly do. Myself, I don't read a whole lot of mysteries. It doesn't mean I won't, but rather they aren't the books getting my attention. We all are more than allowed to make those choices. But what really gets me is people making those decisions without having ever even put a toe outside their comfort zone, or people making those decisions even when it's an author they're familiar with.
For example, Dean Koontz has his Odd Thomas books, right? One of them came out at a graphic novel and only as a graphic novel. Patrons who reserved it by merit of it being Dean Koontz and Odd Thomas, like you do. An unmeasured percentage of them, once they saw it was a "comic book", said "Oh, I don't want that" with a particular wrinkling of the nose and returned it unopened. Didn't even leave the building with it.
John Grisham has a series based around Theodore Boone, a 13 year old lawyer. Across the libraries in my system, that might be shelved in Young Adult or might be shelved in Juvenile (what we call MG). People come in asking for the new Grisham, or for that Grisham in particular, and when they find out it's "for kids", there's that nose wrinkle again. By the way, J is where we shelve our Harry Potter and Y is where our Hunger Games are, and people will check those out, typically after they've seen the movie. Seeing that currently with the Veronica Roth Divergent books.
We actually have a display right now, of subgenres, inspired by a conversation I had with a patron who was taking out Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and had never heard of Steampunk. She didn't end up liking it, but I thought it was cool she was interested and willing to give it a try. There are people who come in looking for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and when they discover it's a mystery, some don't take it. There are people who come in looking for Ray Bradbury, or Ursula LeGuin, and are put off when those are in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section.
There are the people who think Fantasy and Science Fiction should be shelved separately, because they aren't the same thing. There are people who are confused (I'm in this camp) by the fact that we shelve vampires, zombies, and Neil Gaiman in the regular fiction.
We have limited space at my library, and the catalogers aren't all familiar with genre. But it genre an all or nothing prospect? I don't think so. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, say, doesn't necessarily belong in the Fantasy/SciFi section, but he could fit there. Ray Bradbury could be comfortably shelved with the "regular" (literary and commercial) fiction. The time travel romances (with or without highlanders, but really, why are there so many Scottish Highland time travel romances? When did that become a Thing?) aren't in the SciFi, nor is H.G. Wells, but we have one Lovecraft there and the other in regular fiction.
I kind of wish my library would actually just Dewey Decimilize the whole damn thing. Just assign each book its number and let people look for it by merit of that, not by the fast-and-loose genre categorizing we're currently doing. You want fiction? It's in the 800's, then look for the author's last name. Done.
For example, Dean Koontz has his Odd Thomas books, right? One of them came out at a graphic novel and only as a graphic novel. Patrons who reserved it by merit of it being Dean Koontz and Odd Thomas, like you do. An unmeasured percentage of them, once they saw it was a "comic book", said "Oh, I don't want that" with a particular wrinkling of the nose and returned it unopened. Didn't even leave the building with it.
John Grisham has a series based around Theodore Boone, a 13 year old lawyer. Across the libraries in my system, that might be shelved in Young Adult or might be shelved in Juvenile (what we call MG). People come in asking for the new Grisham, or for that Grisham in particular, and when they find out it's "for kids", there's that nose wrinkle again. By the way, J is where we shelve our Harry Potter and Y is where our Hunger Games are, and people will check those out, typically after they've seen the movie. Seeing that currently with the Veronica Roth Divergent books.
We actually have a display right now, of subgenres, inspired by a conversation I had with a patron who was taking out Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and had never heard of Steampunk. She didn't end up liking it, but I thought it was cool she was interested and willing to give it a try. There are people who come in looking for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and when they discover it's a mystery, some don't take it. There are people who come in looking for Ray Bradbury, or Ursula LeGuin, and are put off when those are in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section.
There are the people who think Fantasy and Science Fiction should be shelved separately, because they aren't the same thing. There are people who are confused (I'm in this camp) by the fact that we shelve vampires, zombies, and Neil Gaiman in the regular fiction.
We have limited space at my library, and the catalogers aren't all familiar with genre. But it genre an all or nothing prospect? I don't think so. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, say, doesn't necessarily belong in the Fantasy/SciFi section, but he could fit there. Ray Bradbury could be comfortably shelved with the "regular" (literary and commercial) fiction. The time travel romances (with or without highlanders, but really, why are there so many Scottish Highland time travel romances? When did that become a Thing?) aren't in the SciFi, nor is H.G. Wells, but we have one Lovecraft there and the other in regular fiction.
I kind of wish my library would actually just Dewey Decimilize the whole damn thing. Just assign each book its number and let people look for it by merit of that, not by the fast-and-loose genre categorizing we're currently doing. You want fiction? It's in the 800's, then look for the author's last name. Done.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Categorizing Categoricals (themes, genres, age groups....)
I've realized (or perhaps known for a long time) that many of my novels (not necessarily the stories) are hung on a framework of restaurants and road trips. My recent delight in Google Street View has fostered this, as one must imagine, but even before Street View, I did this. I think part of it has to do with the impression that characters undergoing physical motion are getting somewhere. No pun intended. The characters drive somewhere, the plot moves. Certain things happen at certain landmarks. Read American Gods; Neil Gaiman does it. Read Neverwhere; he does it again. Read The Sun Also Rises, and Hemingway does it too. Characters in motion are learning and growing and speaking in motion, and so the plot carries itself along. Most books don't take place in one room. Even As I Lay Dying involved travel, motion, momentum. The Grapes of Wrath.
I say "my novels" in as grand a way as possible, of course. They live on my hard drive. Not a single other living soul has read them. I'm working to change that, obviously (it's always after something, though. After I finish this next draft. After I finish the query), but that's how it currently stands. I've even been researching agents who seem to be looking for what I offer! Genre wise, I mean. Not riveting descriptions of snarky conversation over coffee in a Southern roadside diner.
My short stories are less restaurant and road trip themed; I'm not sure I could attribute any one label to them. They aren't "literary" either, though that term for me has become so elastic I'm not sure it would hold my pants up. What is literary? What is genre? What the fuck does it matter? I mean, some things are so genre it hurts, and they've become a parody of themselves. You can look at a cover image and know how things are going to go, whether virtue is going to be chastely lost on page 120 after the gloves are taken off, or whether the main female character will be a badass, or whether the main male character will be somewhat bumbling but good-hearted. My short stories are not really O. Henry Award or Pushcart Prize contenders; it would be cool if maybe one of them made it into something like The Best American Nonrequired reading (Which tend to be awesome and interesting yearly collections; I especially like the year that had "The Death of Mustango Salvaje", which was about a female bullfighter. 2005? David Eggers may have been the editor). I like trying to think of story as character driven; perhaps my time as a tabletop role playing gamer has fostered this. Perhaps not. I once won second place in the Dungeons and Dragons "competition" at a gaming convention. I got a Hellboy t-shirt (it's when the first movie came out).
Which then brings me to the age categories for the novels. Children's (nope), MG (middle grade; nope), YA (Young Adult, which I guess my Steampunk offerings would probably fall under. They're full of plucky heroines, friendship, and fairly clean), the Learn to Howl Books (this is a toughie. I think they're Adult, though the narrator, Allie, is young. Like 17 young. But, the narrator in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is very young, and so was Scout Finch, and so is Huckleberry Finn, and Alan Bradley's main character, and those are "adult" books. But I keep hearing this term "New Adult" bandied about. Do we need that? What makes one thing one way and another not?").
Does genre affect classification? The Alan Bradley books (the first is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) are Mysteries. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is typically shelved in the Adult Fiction section (that I know of), and is certainly viewed as literary. The Chronicles of Narnia typically involve children, and my library has them in the Juvenile section (MG, I'd guess, in publisher speak). I'm trying to think of science fiction novels with younger characters. Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright starts out at a boarding school, and revolves around known world mythologies; shelved in the adult section (in my library system). Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children; mostly adult, though some libraries in the system have it in YA.
Is it something worth fighting over? Is there any kind of "stigma" attached to being a "Young Adult Author" who then writes grown up books? An adult author who switches to YA? In the eyes of a lot of the reading public I interact with, there seems to be. There are people who were excited for a new John Grisham......until they realized it was YA. People who didn't read Harry Potter for its age designation (and, presumably, the fact that it was about magic) are clamoring for The Casual Vacancy.
Frankly, I feel that "real" readers read across the genres, the ages, ignore the foiled covers, sink their teeth into the wordy worlds nestled in the pages. But sometimes I'm put off by a cover, or a blurb. I don't really read mysteries (though I will read thrillers, and there's some overlap there). I'll still read picture books (This is Not My Hat is one of the best that's come out recently, as its Caldecott win attests), Jay Asher's YA Thirteen Reasons Why, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (Juvenile), etc. etc. Good books are good books, across age and across genre.
I say "my novels" in as grand a way as possible, of course. They live on my hard drive. Not a single other living soul has read them. I'm working to change that, obviously (it's always after something, though. After I finish this next draft. After I finish the query), but that's how it currently stands. I've even been researching agents who seem to be looking for what I offer! Genre wise, I mean. Not riveting descriptions of snarky conversation over coffee in a Southern roadside diner.
My short stories are less restaurant and road trip themed; I'm not sure I could attribute any one label to them. They aren't "literary" either, though that term for me has become so elastic I'm not sure it would hold my pants up. What is literary? What is genre? What the fuck does it matter? I mean, some things are so genre it hurts, and they've become a parody of themselves. You can look at a cover image and know how things are going to go, whether virtue is going to be chastely lost on page 120 after the gloves are taken off, or whether the main female character will be a badass, or whether the main male character will be somewhat bumbling but good-hearted. My short stories are not really O. Henry Award or Pushcart Prize contenders; it would be cool if maybe one of them made it into something like The Best American Nonrequired reading (Which tend to be awesome and interesting yearly collections; I especially like the year that had "The Death of Mustango Salvaje", which was about a female bullfighter. 2005? David Eggers may have been the editor). I like trying to think of story as character driven; perhaps my time as a tabletop role playing gamer has fostered this. Perhaps not. I once won second place in the Dungeons and Dragons "competition" at a gaming convention. I got a Hellboy t-shirt (it's when the first movie came out).
Which then brings me to the age categories for the novels. Children's (nope), MG (middle grade; nope), YA (Young Adult, which I guess my Steampunk offerings would probably fall under. They're full of plucky heroines, friendship, and fairly clean), the Learn to Howl Books (this is a toughie. I think they're Adult, though the narrator, Allie, is young. Like 17 young. But, the narrator in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is very young, and so was Scout Finch, and so is Huckleberry Finn, and Alan Bradley's main character, and those are "adult" books. But I keep hearing this term "New Adult" bandied about. Do we need that? What makes one thing one way and another not?").
Does genre affect classification? The Alan Bradley books (the first is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) are Mysteries. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is typically shelved in the Adult Fiction section (that I know of), and is certainly viewed as literary. The Chronicles of Narnia typically involve children, and my library has them in the Juvenile section (MG, I'd guess, in publisher speak). I'm trying to think of science fiction novels with younger characters. Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright starts out at a boarding school, and revolves around known world mythologies; shelved in the adult section (in my library system). Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children; mostly adult, though some libraries in the system have it in YA.
Is it something worth fighting over? Is there any kind of "stigma" attached to being a "Young Adult Author" who then writes grown up books? An adult author who switches to YA? In the eyes of a lot of the reading public I interact with, there seems to be. There are people who were excited for a new John Grisham......until they realized it was YA. People who didn't read Harry Potter for its age designation (and, presumably, the fact that it was about magic) are clamoring for The Casual Vacancy.
Frankly, I feel that "real" readers read across the genres, the ages, ignore the foiled covers, sink their teeth into the wordy worlds nestled in the pages. But sometimes I'm put off by a cover, or a blurb. I don't really read mysteries (though I will read thrillers, and there's some overlap there). I'll still read picture books (This is Not My Hat is one of the best that's come out recently, as its Caldecott win attests), Jay Asher's YA Thirteen Reasons Why, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (Juvenile), etc. etc. Good books are good books, across age and across genre.
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