Skytown!

My book Skytown is available now from Fox Spirit Books!

It was actually released a day before WorldCon75 in Helsinki, Finland. I was in Finland that whole week and the next, so only now can I really appreciate having a new book out! It looks amazing with that cover by Jenny Haines, and it's available in paperback from Amazon (and Amazon UK).

WorldCon and Finland were amazing and I got to meet so many good friends from Twitter! Now I'm doing my best to catch up on my sleep (and shake the con crud) in time for DragonCon in Atlanta a week and a half from now.

My new book and a friend's new book!

My fun steampunk fantasy adventure novel, Skytown, which stars Jo and Lizzy (from various short stories I've written about them) is releasing on August 8! It's published by Fox Spirit Books. I'll be in Finland for Worldcon 75 when it releases, but as soon as I get home I'll update here with a link!

Here's the cover, made by the awesome Jenny Haines:

While you're waiting for Skytown's release, you can buy and read J.B. Rockwell's incredible SF novel, Hecate! It's a prequel to her equally amazing Serengeti and Dark and Stars, all available from Severed Press. And look at that fantastic cover!

Podcast and Schedule!

I've pretty much fallen off the wall when it comes to blogs--either reading others', or updating my own. But here's a quick update on what I've been up to.

In February I started a podcast called Strange Animals Podcast, which is a lot of fun and updates weekly. It's available pretty much everywhere, and if you can't find it on your preferred listening app let me know so I can take care of that.

My schedule for the rest of the summer is going to be extremely busy, in a good way! I'll have the full details up on the podcast site (see link above), but basically I'll be at WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland in August, then at DragonCon in Atlanta as usual over Labor Day weekend! I definitely want to say hi and meet up with you so let me know if you're going to be at either con so we can get together!

I also have a book coming out very soon from Fox Spirit Books. It's called Skytown and is a full-length Lizzy and Jo story, which means lots of excitement and action, and lots of picnics. I'll post when it's available!

Lego fail

I saw the Lego Movie a few weekends ago and it really is fun. I enjoyed it a lot and I'm one of millions brainwashed by the "Everything Is Awesome" song. It made me remember how much fun it is to play with Lego bricks too, so I bought a few inexpensive sets and had a great time building from the instructions. I thought I could pick up a box here and there as I could afford it, and eventually I'd have enough bricks to build whatever I liked.

Since I've now written seven Lizzy and Jo short stories, a novella, and I'm working on a novel with those characters, naturally my goal is to build an airship with Legos and play with it when I'm supposed to be writing. I can't afford the big Lego sets that would allow me to make an airship yet, but there are a million Lego mini-figures and I thought I could get some and mix and match their parts to make Lizzy and Jo figures.

The problem is, Jo is a black woman. I thought it wouldn't be hard to find a POC female Lego mini-fig, but I was wrong. There aren't any. Confused, I went to the official Lego site to see if I was missing something, and I found this.

It's under the frequently asked questions, so I'm not the first person to notice that hardly any Lego figures have brown skin. They say the yellow is a "neutral color" and they didn't want to assign specific ethnicity.

Because everyone knows that yellow is neutral, right? Right?

They also say they will use different skin tones for figures based on movies and so forth in which they're going for more realism, but somehow that's different. Because I guess there aren't that many Lego sets based on movies, and anyway we all know how diverse the typical movie cast is, right? Right?

Harry Potter
Star Wars
The Hobbit
Lord of the Rings
Toy Story
Marvel and DC Superheroes
Man of Steel
Pirates of the Caribbean
Lone Ranger
Raiders of the Lost Ark
etc etc etc

But don't worry, there ARE Lego minifigs out there that have brown skin! In addition to some really, really hard to find sports figures (mostly basketball players, all male), there are:

Nick Fury, from the superheroes set

Vartruvius, from the Lego Movie--you know, the movie in which all the other characters (except Shaq) have yellow skin, because this is not based on real life

And a werewolf! Although I guess that's supposed to represent brown fur. I guess. I hope.

I sent Lego a short, polite email asking if they could make more female figures, and start making some figures with brown skin. They never replied. Edited to Add: OOPS, should have checked my spam filter before I wrote that: they did reply, with a long and canned-sounding (but polite) response in which they said (in part) this: "we believe skin color is not important so we've given most of our mini-figures a neutral (yellow) skin." /headdesk

Welcome to 2014

Last year I made a list of new year's resolutions. I kept some of them. For instance, I did get a tattoo, and in fact tomorrow I go back to get it colored in. I will post pictures, I promise!

I also hiked more last year and lost a bit of weight (although I want to lose more) and did some interesting things and did actually improve my writing. I wrote a number of short stories--more, in fact, than I'd written since 2008--but only one book and a novella.

The kickass steampunk YA I wrote in 2013, The Steam-Powered Raven, has attracted some agent interest. We'll see how that works out. I haven't decided on my next writing project--I'm halfway through a Lizzy and Jo novel that I want to finish, have a few stories I need to revise, have a few novels I need to revise in major ways, and want to finally write the final book in the Bell-Man trilogy so I can find a good publisher for the whole thing. I also want to continue writing short stories. They helped me improve my writing a lot more than I expected.

I decided to keep my new year's resolutions really, really simple this year. I'm only making one: learn to play drums. I've wanted to learn drums since I was in college but never got around to it. Well, it's time. Because it's never too early to have a mid-life crisis.

Thoughts about short stories

I think I'm going to write 50,000 words of short stories for NaNo this year, probably most of them Lizzy and Jo stories. At least I'm going to try. To that end, I'm thinking hard about the structure of the short story and what it should accomplish. I'm terrible at writing short and half my stories turn out flaccid, weak, meaningless, unsatisfying, and disjointed.

So here are some thoughts I've just jotted down. Maybe they'll help someone else. I have no idea if my thoughts are on target for other writers, but I think it's going to help me. (I go on to talk about my two main characters' specific motivations, but I left that part out since no one but me cares.) Oh, MC = main character.

Short story arcs start with a quick view of the MC’s situation, a change in that situation out of the MC’s control (usually), the results of that change going in unexpected directions, the MC’s decision to fix what’s broken or encourage what’s started to change (this can be subtle, a realization), the results of the MC’s efforts in that direction, and the final view of the MC’s changed/restored state.

Events can be reasonably random, but the MC’s decisions HAVE to effect changes and lead naturally to the final outcome.

The less time between the opening and the change (inciting incident), the tighter the story feels, as long as the opening adequately sets the stage. The reader must understand why the change is important. (Some events are self-explanatory, like the MC losing her job, but it’s still stronger if we know whether the MC liked her job, how much she depends on the paycheck or the regular hours, whether there’s someone in her workplace important to her that she may never see again, etc. You can sneak these details in after the inciting incident, as long as it’s done very soon after.)

In the best stories, something internal changes for the MC along with something external. Both are important. One without the other makes a weak story although technically correct. Romances are satisfying because they provide both internal changes (MC falls in love) and external changes (MC accepts another character into her life).

In the case of recurring characters in linked short stories, the small internal changes in each story should mirror the major character arc from first story to last. In this way linked short stories mimic the novel, where external events continually force MC to change and evaluate herself until the climax causes a big final change; but linked short stories offer the changes in a smaller setting and evaluate different facets of the MC’s situation/outlook without muddying the character’s motivations (since only one facet is explored per story).

My poor neglected blog

I'm killing time before my dentist appointment this morning, and I can't eat, and I can't get too involved with anything because then I'll have to leave, and I can't do yardwork because I'd be all sweaty and gross at the dentist, and anyway I have to head to work afterwards. I thought, "Oh, I need to update my blog."

My goodness, do I! Poor blog hasn't been updated since June. I'm mostly on twitter these days, plus I have another blog that I started this spring to post pictures of my garage makeover project. Somehow that blog turned into the one that I post all the pictures of all my projects to. Like the current project, which is a steampunk owl catcher costume I plan to wear to DragonCon. Which, incidentally, is just barely over a week away and I am not done with the costume.

I thought learning how to sew better, and setting myself a goal of "outfit by DragonCon" would give me a fun summer project. Instead, it has consumed all my free time. When I'm not working on the costume, I'm out hiking. I've destroyed one pair of brand-new hiking boots already this year from hiking so much.

So I haven't written much lately. After DragonCon I can swing into high gear and get some writing projects finished--my steampunk YA (working title The Steam-Powered Raven), a steampunk novella, and a few steampunk short stories.

There is a theme in my life right now. Can you spot it?

The Next Big Thing

Fellow Inkbot and excellent writer Emma Maree Urquhart tagged me on the Next Big Thing. I've actually done it before, or a version of it, but it's been a long time and I'm now working on a new project (as usual).

In fact, I'm working on two. I started some serious research for a YA steampunk story at the beginning of the year, and I've started writing it. But that's not the project I'm about to discuss.

What is the working title of your book?

The Adventures of Lizzy and Jo, Air Pirates

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I never write short stories. I just don't. But another Inkbot, Rob Haines, gave our group a heads-up on a new anthology series from UK publisher Fox Spirit, and I got interested in writing a steampunk story for the pirate-themed anthology. I already had the world built for my YA WIP. Suddenly I not only had an idea, I had two main characters, a setting, backstory for both, and a burning need to write about them. Oh, and here's the table of contents for the Pirates "Fox Pockets" anthology. My story's called "Skyway."

What genre does your book fall under?

Steampunk fantasy, short story collection

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I don't know anything about actors. I know exactly what my two main characters look like, though. Let me do a search.

Okay, here's Pia Glenn, who is so elegant-looking that I know she'd make a good Jo.

And Lizzy, hell. She just looks like Joan Jett.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Former highwayman Lizzy and runaway bride Jo take to the skies in a stolen airship in search of adventure, loot, and new lives.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Since this will be a short story collection, most of the stories will be published in various anthologies and magazines over the next few years.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I've written three stories in about six weeks and don't want to stop.

What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

I'm still reading my way (increasingly obsessively) through the steampunk genre, and so far I've been discouraged by the lack of fun I've found. Steampunk is fun; it's inventive; it's enthusiastic about the cool stuff from the past while jettisoning the bad stuff or dealing with it in a more modern way. So why are so many steampunk books gritty grimdark terrible things are happening and we have no sense of humor? I'm sure there are books out there like the one I'm writing. I can't wait to find them.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

When you immerse yourself in a genre that's also a growing cultural movement (and yeah, I do think it is), you get sucked in. I always thought steampunk was cool. Now...well, I don't own a pair of goggles yet, but it's becoming more and more likely.

Tag Time!

I'll take a cue from Emma Maree and just tag all the Inkbots. Because I'm lazy that way.