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Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 55
March 15, 2018
Fantasy Books
My first leap into speculative fiction was fantasy, where I first saw a lot of woman characters surface. Magic, monsters…yeah, I could deal. Links and pages about the books are coming.
[image error]I was inspired by this cover image. Add monsters and stir.
[image error]NOVEL: This, believe it or not, originated from fan fiction. I never much liked other people’s characters; the ones I created kept taking over, so I turned it into a story.
[image error]
[image error]We had a tall ship come into Alexandria, VA, which was awesome to see. I wanted to create a story about the ship and the sea.
[image error]Years ago, I attended a seminar on Civil War maps. They were expensive and hard to get, so I wondered if someone could have map magic.
[image error]This was inspired by a candle at a September 11 event. I thought about how spies might communicate and got this story.
[image error]The anthology call was a princess, a lizard, and a boatman. So I slapped a princess in the military with the rank of boatsman and warriors with a lizard motif were chasing her.
[image error]This was for a contest based on two photographs. One photo was of the sea and rocks, so I thought California and away I went.
[image error]This is my first map magic story. I did as a superhero who has the powers to map out the lives of people.
[image error]I was trying my hand at setting and put this in Arlington, VA. Four Mile Run is a real local stream.
[image error]Clowns get a bad rap because the disorted features make people laugh or frighten them. So I thought there might be another reason for them…and it’s monster.
Science Fiction Books
After seeing Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I have a special love for adventuring out into space. There weren’t many women in the science fiction books I read growing up, so I have lots of women having adventures. Links to pages with blurbs coming soon.
[image error]This was for an anthology call and provided the opening sentence. Everyone was going to do first person or dialogue, so I wanted to be different and started with a tweet.
[image error]This is a dark science fiction story, a legacy of my Desert Storm days. I knew a person like the character’s friend in the story.
[image error]A sampler of 5 of my short stories. All of these feature women having adventures.
[image error]People creating cat traps (a box) went viral on the Internet, so I thought why not alien traps?
[image error]A woman actor ages out of roles much faster than men. So my character takes to space travel to continue doing what she loves.
[image error]This started with a writing workshop prompt from a fuzzy blue pillow. When your military leadership gets eaten and you’re only a private, what do you do?
[image error]This was for an anthology call involving disability and steampunk. I thought about what it was like for the Hawaiians when the first missionaries came to the island and what they might have offered.
[image error]I looked out the window and saw a woman in a bright red coat towing a cooler. What’s in that cooler? Read the story to find out.
[image error]I attended an art exhibit at the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum. Wonderful exhibit, and I thought about the stories art tells us, even when we don’t realize it.
[image error]I ran across a very old book at the library that mentioned a cursed painting of a cat that had caused all its owners to die. Oddly, the sketch of the cat looked like one I had growing up, Dum-Dum (my mother named the cat).
Short Flights (of the Imagination)
Flights of imagination needn’t be long in order to weave a wonderful tale. Join these authors in their shorter flights for a broad array of fabulous short stories in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more. Perfect imaginative getaways for commuting, breaks and lunchtimes, bedtime reading, or anytime you want to pack a great read into a short time.
Your itinerary of short flights includes:
Watcher Ghost by Linda Maye Adams
In Search of the Perfect Cup by Russ Crossley
Chimere by Marcelle Dube
Finder by Michael Jasper
The Bear in the Cable-Knit Sweater by Robert Jeschonek
Unsafe, Unsound by Kate MacLeod
Ghosting by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Moon Spell by Rita Schulz
By Her Hand, She Draws You Down by Douglas Smith
The Librarian by Blaze Ward
And some package deals (collections!):
One Horn to Rule Them All by Lisa Mangum
The Cache and Other Stories by Sherry D. Ramsey
Decision Points by Bryan Thomas Schmidt (ed.)
Bad Ends by Rebecca Senese
S, F & H by Harvey Stanbrough
Pick up your copy here!
Website Updates
I’m writing this as I wait for the junk people to come pick up a chest of drawers. It’s one of pieces that I’m getting rid of as the budget permits and replacing. I bought them when I first transferred here for the military, and they’re no longer me.
I had a bad last year because the day job was pulling me in two different directions–which tends to happen when you’re one person trying to do a job that 3-4 people should have. So getting rid of old furniture is at least a way for me to make a different on the home front. Little changes, but important changes.
[image error]There were some days at work where I felt like doing this. It amazes me that companies always say “Make do with less” and not change anything–without understand the impacts.
I’m also updating my website. There were two reasons for it.
The first was that someone visited my site and then emailed me and asked if I had any books on Amazon. I’d thought it was obvious on the site…but apparently not.
[image error]Oops.
I’d done actor David Hedison’s site for many years (1997-2007) and duplicated what I did there, which was the same as what I was seeing on big name writer sites.
Of course, there was a nuance that I didn’t catch: If someone came to the site, they were already looking for David Hedison or checking on one of his films. The discoverability already existed for him by his name. Whereas, I need to make it easier for people who are stumbling across me for various reasons to find my books.
Then came the second reason, which was a timely blog post from Gill Andrews on websites. I love how things sometimes show up right when we need it.
But most of the advice I see assumes one or ten books. After that, it gets pretty unwieldy. I had to quit David’s site because it was very unwieldy. He has over 200 credits, and we were putting up photos to help promote him. The site had hundreds of pages and was time consuming to update.
And with Facebook changing algorithms, a website is actually the one thing I have total control over.
So I’m both trying to simplify my navigation and make my books more visible. And also have some fun with it.
Christine McAlister mentioned that she wanted to know where I got the idea for stories from. I’ve always thought that no one would be interested in that. Yet, I have a post on the military that I thought was so routine that I almost didn’t do it, and it’s one of my most popular ones. So, why not?
And I’m having some fun with the graphics as well. You can see it on the My Books page itself, and the ideas in the captions on the pages I’ve already done. Onward!
GALCOM Universe Series
When I was growing up, I watched Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (yeah, I know, polar opposites). I liked the idea of people on a ship going out into space and having adventures.
[image error] This started from old sailing stories like the Mary Celeste and the Flying Dutchman. Why not a spaceship?
[image error]I grew up reading my mother’s Fate Magazine subscription and enjoyed the ghost stories. So when there was an anthology call for ghosts, I went for it, and it turned into a novel.
Lonely Planet: GALCOM Universe 2
Hope Delgado specializes in alien ghosts in space. But life on a military spaceship is a challenge for the civilian expert. Even her workouts at the gym come under scrutiny by the ship’s skipper. She thinks that’s the worst to happen to her until she spots the ghost spaceship outside.
The problem is everyone else can see it, too, and it’s a deadly reason why …
A short novel available from your favorite booksellers.
March 14, 2018
Crying Planet: GALCOM Universe 1
Hope Delgado has only one goal: to be an old woman. But the ghosts have other ideas. When Galactic Command comes calling with an offer–a bracelet to block the ghosts–she realizes that it might save her life.
But GALCOM wants her to travel in space to another planet to fix a ghost problem that is threatening the population. To save her life, Hope must do the one thing doesn’t want to do. Things are never fair, and it’s about to get worse.
A short novel available from your favorite booksellers.
March 13, 2018
My Military Books
[image error] When I came back from Desert Storm, everyone asked me “What was it like?” It took 25 years to figure out how to answer it.
[image error] I was just starting to understand that I needed to put more of my experience into these. This was painful story because it was about a friendship that died during Desert Storm.
[image error] I wrote this a year after the jet crashed into the Pentagon. I’m still amazed I could write about it then, because I don’t think I could do it now.
Red, White, and True: Stories from Veterans and Families, World War II to Present
Even as we celebrate the return of our military from wars in the Middle East, we are becoming increasingly aware of the struggles that await veterans on the home front. Red, White, and True offers readers a collection of voices that reflect the experiences of those touched by war-from the children of veterans who encounter them in their fathers’ recollections of past wars to the young men and women who fought in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The diversity of perspectives collected in this volume validates the experiences of our veterans and their families, describing their shared struggles and triumphs while honoring the fact that each person’s military experience is different.
Leila Levinson’s powerful essay recounts her father’s experience freeing a POW camp during World War II. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder provides a chilling account of being a new second lieutenant in Vietnam. Army combat veteran Brooke King recounts the anguish of raising her young children by day while trying to distinguish between her horrific memories of IED explosions in Baghdad and terrifying dreams by night.
These individual stories of pain and struggle, along with twenty-nine others, illustrate the inescapable damage that war rends in the fabric of society and celebrate our dauntless attempts to repair these holes with compassion and courage.
Available from your favorite booksellers.
Layers: A Desert Storm Veteran and 911
On September 11, 2001, the world changed forever when four planes crashed, including one that struck the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Linda Maye Adams describes the events of the day in Washington DC from a Desert Storm veteran’s perspective. This story moves chronologically through what happened and how it impacted the people who lived in that area, capturing the emotion of an unforgettable day.
Available from your favorite booksellers.
