News
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This round of updates was brought to you by the letter K on May 31st, 2012.
Sea Gifts
The latest on the publishing roadmap
"Unsilenced" sold
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, an online fantasy magazine with some lovely creative and production values, has accepted my novelette "Unsilenced." I'm excited to have found such a great home for this story, with its theft of voices and all the loneliness that comes with power.
Sea Gifts re-released
I've taken the self-publishing plunge with Sea Gifts, a novelette with sea-dragons and witches and betrayal. Drollerie Press previously published this one; the rights have since reverted to me, but it's difficult to find markets that accept reprints, so I thought it would be worth offering it on its own. It was a fascinating journey through potential cover images and formatting guides. Currently it's available from Amazon in Kindle format; other formats and sales venues will follow.
New title for the forthcoming book
Through All Four Seasons has been retitled to Heart of the Dragon's Realm. Just looking at the two titles side-by-side tells me how different they are in marketability — you get a much stronger sense of genre from the second. Naturally, more than the title has changed; I've finished developmental and line edits, and the folks at Carina Press are working their production magic.
Current writing projects
A third story in the world of Hellsgate
I'm almost done with a draft of Let Slip Glory, and now I'm writing its sequel, And Loose the Hound, with a hellhound hero. I'm envisioning the two as a duology with different sets of main characters but a single overarching story, so I'd like to have both of them finished before I submit them — that way I can't plot my way into a corner in the second book because of something irreversible I set up in the first book.
Gamebook scribblings
Inspired by the Windhammer Prize, I'm working on a short fantasy gamebook tentatively titled "Sigil-beasts," where YOU are a mage who must resurrect a dragon to defend your homeland. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the uppercase. It's traditional.) I've played with branching fiction before, but it's a whole new world when it comes to figuring out mechanics and statistics. Bring on the dice!
Recent reading
Erotic fantasy by Janine Ashbless
I stumbled across a recommendation for the Arabian-flavored Heart of Flame, a setting that always intrigues me. The richness of the culture and some lovely writing and characterization drew me in, and I've gone on to read some of her other works. One of her short story collections (Dark Enchantments) is particularly impressive in terms of its range; Ashbless moves from horror to romance, always while painting a vivid sense of another place. I'd avoid her if you mind very explicit works or demand romance in your reading, however.
A gentle, bittersweet fantasy short story by Ken Liu
"Paper Menagerie" (links to a PDF) is an award-winning story of astonishing grief, beauty, and delicacy despite its hard look at cultural divides. I don't think that you need to be a regular reader of fantasy to appreciate this one.
Gamebook Adventures on iOS and Android
I thoroughly enjoyed playing An Assassin in Orlandes, a gamebook on an Android engine that makes even dice-rolling pleasurable. Some lavish illustrations are incorporated as well; the entire user experience was just dreamfully smooth. I downloaded it to my phone out of curiosity and found myself playing it obsessively until I found my way to a successful ending. Fun times investigating a conspiracy in a city.
Miscellaneous updates
A plurality of word processors
I've been trying out Scrivener, a word processor mostly acclaimed for its friendliness to writing in segments and being able to organize those segments easily. I suspect this is part of a trend toward outlining that seems inevitable for me as I start writing novel-length works. However, I'm still using Microsoft Word for some older stories, and there is ever and always the faithful text editor (TextEdit).