Earth Present
And….wow. That was quite a month.
20Books Vegas 2018
….was grand. It was a gathering of authors who are reaching past the gatekeepers of traditional publishing, to follow their own passions and pursuing excellence in their craft. People engaged in getting empirical feedback directly from their readers, and making changes to their works in real time. And perhaps most of all it was a lovely community of people pursuing all of the above.
I also had a chance to wander through Las Vegas, which I hadn’t really done before. The neon sign graveyard I wanted to see was unfortunately closed – I did get some nice pictures. Then I got to wander through several casino. Las Vegas after the age of neon still seems quite in line with its classic essence. That essence, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson: “Shoot the pasties off the nipples of a ten-foot stripper at 20 paces, win a cotton-candy goat.”
NaNoWriMo, overachieving, and Science Fiction Music
The Vegas outing also fell in the middle of National Novel Writing
Month, a yearly challenge to write a book from start to finish in 1
month.
Since I’ve done this before, I figured I’d really up the challenge and do two novels, for 100,000 words.
To achieve this output while retaining my day job, going to to a
conference and even enjoying Thanksgiving, I relied heavily on the
software Dragon Dictate. It’s a software program that transcribes speech
into text, which can be a lot quicker than typing – especially for a
first draft. This also meant I was speaking in punctuation for a couple
of hours a day, to where it began to bleed into every day
conversation. At one point I was talking with someone and I said “Sure
comma sounds good let’s do that period”.
With 5 days left I found myself in the interesting position of having
finished 2 novels, and still having 12,000 words to go. So I dug up
another half-completed draft, and finished that one too.
On Thursday evening November 29th, And also a great and heavy band was
playing up the street, the epic Red Fang – with two opening bands with
very interesting names, “Telekinetic Yeti” and “Frisco”.
I had 2500 words to go. So of course, I did the responsible thing in order to keep to my goals.
I went to see these bands.
They all were great, and I thoroughly recommend them. I bought T-Shirts
of Telekinetic Yeti in particular, because they looked like the
bands sounded – the sonic version of 70s sword and sorcery bookcovers.
I was not disappointed. For once, pretty rare in random shows, they all were frickin’ as great as their names let on.
| Telekinetic Yeti | Frisco | Red Fang |
NaNoWriMo, overachieving, and Science Fiction Musi
The next morning of November 30th, I rallied my hard-worked brain and pushed through the last batch of words. Results: victory!
Out now
With all that flew past in November, I
was glad to be able to release this new work as well – my standalone
novella, Underclass! It’s the tale of a man trapped in a future ruled by
AIs, who have determined a uniquely distressing solution to income
inequality. Released on Dec. 1. Thanks to all my ARC team who reviewed
it.
Current E-giveaways
I’m also involved in some giveaways of my
own, below. Lots of other fine books are available there besides mine,
feel free to check ’em out.
| Stay in from the cold and sometimes bloody outdoors, with my supernatural crime novella Blood and Hope, as part of the holiday promotional giveaway I’ll be Home for Witchmas through December 31st. | From Dec. 10th to the 16th, my Twilight Zone-esque Hyperspace Radio will be available as part of SFF Book Bonanza’s typically great December promotion. If you don’t have a chance to check it out that week, then for the following week of Dec. 18th to the 23rd it should be available here for $.99 in human Earth dollars, or the suitable equivalent in interdimensional galacticredits. |
| My novella about a young man who becomes a troubleshooter for magical startups, Wishful Thinking, is available through Jan 2. 2019 as one of many Winter’s Tales. The next book in this series is one of many books I’m looking forward to releasing in the coming year. | And rounding the trend of eerie tales in the brisk winter, I’m proud to have my tale Ghost Magnet in the fine promotion Winter Fantasy, from December 12th through January 9th. |
If you enjoy one of my tales from the above offerings, please do leave a
review on Amazon via the handy links in their titles. You can also
check out my books via my author page.
What’s next?
A lot. I’m compiling a list, and checking it thrice, of the many
manuscripts I want to complete and release in 2019. I expect this to
include a second novel-length installment in my Quantum Mechanic series,
a sequel to Two-Fisted Jesus Tales #1, and perhaps the first in a
series of epic fantasy and the first in a series of military SF. There
have also been a number of requests to make “The Warthog School of
Vocational Magic” into a series as well. I’ll also create things I
haven’t even planned on. I’m stoked for all of it and more.
Also I might even, I don’t know, take a nap at some point. I hear they can be wonderful.
Bookbub for Books, Bub
I’m on Bookbub,
and in addition to listing my own books I’ve started writing reviews of
some of my favorite others’ works. If you haven’t heard of Bookbub, it
can be a great way to find explore authors, books and genres. If you’d
like to follow me there, click below.
And wherever you are, keep on imagining, ~ j : )