Austin Worley's Blog: Writing, Reading, and Living with Austin Worley, page 5

Art Reveal: Arlise Dun

Remember how I mentioned an art commission back in October? It’s done! Here’s a look at the first ever official character art of Arlise:

Does she look awesome or what?! Arlise has lived exclusively in my head and on the pages of my stories for almost ten years, so it’s still kinda surreal to see her brought to life so faithfully. All the little details on this are fantastic: the facial burn from her battle with a sorcerer, her gold band from Beren, the black flecks on the blade of her sword, Ferde. Even better? Her build. I wasn’t sure if I could find an artist who could accurately portray her sheer physicality, but that definitely wasn’t an issue for Tori.

Tori Goggin did fantastic work; I cannot overstate how awesome it was to work with her in bringing life to Arlise! If you’re ever in the market for character art, you should definitely check out her profiles on Twitter (@tori_goggin) or Instagram (@tigerlilydrawz7). Her artwork is lovely, and she offers commissions at very reasonable prices.

Hopefully readers love this as much as me! This may become my new profile pic on a lot–if not all–of my author accounts. After all, who better to represent me and my stories than Arlise?

Follow Me on BlueSky

Hey, everyone! With how chaotic Twitter has been lately, from the wonky algorithm to nonexistent moderation and changes to the ToS, I’ve decided to expand my social media presence to BlueSky.

You can find me there at this link. My following is small–far smaller than on Twitter–but I can already tell people are more reliably seeing my posts, which makes the entire experience so much better than tweeting into a void!

So if you’re over there, feel free to come say hello; I always follow fellow creatives back!

Sword & Scandal Out Now!

Folks, it’s official: “He Who Sows” is out now in Sword & Scandal!

For most Tyrians, winter solstice is a time to celebrate the birth of the universe with decadent rites. For Tanis, there’s no better night to steal a stone…tool sacred to the fertility god Yarhib.

But it’s no small feat to castrate He Who Sows. As she infiltrates the debauched festivities, Tanis and her gladiatrix sister-in-arms Sunna must contend with carnal distractions, a randy warrior monk, draconic watch-beasts, and an artifact as erotic as it is eldritch.

If this sounds like the sort of fiction you’d like to read, you can find it at these vendors. Sword & Scandal is also available through the indie bookstore Godless, where it’s in the Top 15 New Releases! Can we break into the Top 10?

Sword & Scandal Preorders

Good news: Sword & Scandal–the anthology of NSFW heroic fantasy featuring my bawdy sword & sorcery tale “He Who Sows”–is available for pre-order now in ebook, paperback, and hardcover editions!

Our editor has opted for a narrow release of the ebook, which is limited to Kindle. However, if you’re after a paperback or hardcover, the anthology is available from five major online and brick-and-mortar retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Powell’s City of Books, and Bookshop.org.

Sword & Scandal covers a really wide range in terms of content, from almost classic S&S with no-holds-barred content (like “He Who Sows”) to darkly comedic takes on fairy tales to outright erotic parodies. One constant: all the blood and sex you normally find in heroic fantasy is ratcheted up to eleven.

“He Who Sows” shares the pages of Sword & Scandal with almost a dozen other stories from authors old and new:

The Gateway of Pleasure by Jim LeeShaven Beards by Ross BaxterThe Snow Princess by Pip PinkertonVermina’s Creature by Bitter KarellaThe Baron with a Thousand Cats by Gary EveryWindblades by C.L. WernerFlesh and Ink by Rebecca BuchananConfessions of a Wicked Harpastum Player by J. Manfred Weichsel and Alexander JoynerKai-zur the Godless by David CarterAbduction from the Seraglio by David J. WestThe Harem of Al’Azeri by Jasiah WitkofskyHe Who Sows by Me

Each of these story’s has received a fantastic black-and-white illustration from Ukrainian artist Apolonster, who also did the cover. Some of them are…really spicy. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. This book will scandalize!

Sword & Scandal releases on November 12th!

EbookKindlePaperbackAmazonBarnes & NobleBooks-A-MillionPowell’sBookshop.orgHardcoverAmazonBarnes & NobleBooks-A-MillionPowell’sBookshop.org

Update: October 2024

It’s the spookiest time of the year, so it’s only fitting I’ve been nose deep in dark fantasy all month long!

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All my attention this month has been on “One Bitter Note”. My best guess is the first draft sits somewhere around 66-75%. Since I make extensive edits and revisions as I write, that means it’s almost done. Originally, I wondered whether OBN might qualify as flash fiction, but it looks like a (short) short story. If only Whetstone wasn’t on hiatus; “One Bitter Note” might just come in under 2500 words!

So far, I’ve really enjoyed the novelty of writing from the perspective of my Pied Piper-based villain protagonist, Hunold. However, I’m having even more fun writing Arlise as a hero antagonist. Some of my favorite bits to write in stories like “Warden of the Wex Wood” or “The Skull in the Tree” are the moments where the villain realizes just how screwed they are; “One Bitter Note” is more or less one of those moments extended into an entire story.

Speaking of Arlise, I have some exciting news: I’ve commissioned some character art of her from one of my writer/artist mutuals over on Twitter! She was offering commissions on sale for October, and I just couldn’t pass a deal like that up. As far as I know, I’m currently working my way up the waitlist. I’ll be sure to share once the commission is finished!

Otherwise, The Skull in the Tree has been released as a standalone novelette from Farthest Star Publishing, and pre-orders for Sword & Scandal are starting to go live. Once the Kindle edition is up on Amazon, I’ll make a blog post here collecting them all.

On that note, the editor has informed us there’s a little money left over, so we’re all receiving physical contributor’s copies. eBooks are awesome, but there’s something so much more real about holding a copy of your work in your hands, so this news has me very excited!

As you can see, my reading this month has turned towards the macabre. On one hand, I wanted to set the tone for Halloween. On the other, I was looking for a little inspiration for “One Bitter Note”. Some of the guilt, paranoia, and delusions of narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” are reflected in Hunold, though he’s not quite that far gone.

I don’t know what it is about Lovecraft’s writing, but it really evokes the Halloween season for me, so I decided to reread The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. This one doesn’t get near as much attention as stories like The Call of Cthulhu or The Dunwich Horror, but I think it’s one of his best. I haven’t read it since I first worked my way through a complete collection of his work, and I think it holds up just as well now as it did then.

I feel similarly about “The Thing on the Doorstep”. It’s not one of the titles folks think when they hear “Lovecraft”, but it stands alongside the best of them, and the ambiguity of its ending is an interesting contrast to The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

I haven’t gone stargazing too much this month, but I did manage an awesome milestone: my third comet! C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas is only the second one I’ve photographed, and by far the brightest. Look at that tail! I just wish I could’ve seen it without interference from light pollution…

Hopefully I’ll have some good news about “One Bitter Note”–and maybe some of my submissions–for you in November. Until then, take care!

Update: September 2024

Autumn is upon us at last, which means it’s also time for a new monthly update. September wasn’t as eventful as August, but there’s still news to share!

September’s been a rough month on the writing front. After finishing my worldbuilding revisions, I returned to actually drafting The Captain and the Crown and actually made some headway, but that initial burst of productivity sputtered in the face of the fact that I just couldn’t rediscover the passion I brought to this book back in May. I tried to immerse myself in sci-fi stuff to see if that would help, but it just couldn’t quench this fantasy fever I’ve had since the reveal of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Since I wasn’t getting anywhere, I decided to set it aside for now without finishing Chapter Two and return to one of my unfinished stories from last year, “In the Web of Fate”. Rare is the unfinished tale I love enough to come back for, but this one is too good to remain a fragment. I love the core idea, the look we get at Arlise before the Watchers, and the role these events will take in bending her character arc. Unfortunately, the second scene was very complicated, and I reached a point last November where I just couldn’t figure out how to move the scene forward.

Time and distance from the story must’ve helped, because I finally managed to untangle that knot. I smashed out the most troublesome section in a day or two, and I can see the chain of events needed to carry the scene into the next narrative beat. Alas, faced with the task of grinding through them to reach the good stuff, my brain decided to churn out ideas for an entirely new story instead.

I’ve toyed with the idea of a fantasy piece inspired by the legend of the Pied Piper for years now; it has all the elements of an excellent fantasy mystery centered on Arlise. More than once, I actually outlined the idea and started writing, but my efforts never satisfied me. While reading a collection of Solomon Kane stories, I realized I might be coming at it from the wrong perspective. Instead of Arlise, why not tell the tale from the POV of the Piper? Instead of just retelling the events of the legend, why not write about the aftermath?

These questions fired my imagination and yielded my current project, “One Bitter Note”. One reason I think I’ve encountered difficulties with The Captain and the Crown and “In the Web of Fate” is that both feature sections where the lead is alone in their own head while moving through a rich environment in need of elaborate descriptions. This forces me into a really tricky balancing act, which just isn’t present in “One Bitter Note”.

OBN features almost no movement at all. Instead, it’s driven by an increasingly tense conversation around a campfire as my villainous lead Hunold struggles to discern whether the woman who just joined him (Arlise) knows what he did in the village of Hameln. Obviously, this means Hunold is in his head a fair bit, but dialogue should break these sections into bite-size chunks.

Hopefully this little story lets me flex my creative muscles and shake off the dust that’s settled on my mind since the oral surgery, and I can swiftly return to chipping away at “In the Web of Fate”.

But outside of these difficulties, September wasn’t a bad month at all. Farthest Star released “Hanging at Crosbhothar” as a standalone novelette around the middle of the month. My high school creative writing teacher told me she wanted a signed copy of my first book, and I aim to deliver with a custom rebound edition (because she deserves way better than the actual cover)!

“He Who Sows” continues to speed toward publication in Sword & Scandal. Kickstarter backers already have their hands on the ebook, hardcovers are in the mail, and our editor has–as you may’ve heard–set the full release date for November 12th. He also gave me a look at the illustration for “He Who Sows”!

While the artist obviously took a lot of creative liberties, the art itself is excellent. Also? Extremely explicit. We’re talking X-rated. No way I can show it off here. If I dust off my Hive account for a post closer to release, I’ll be sure to mention it on the blog, though.

My digital contributor’s copy came in last week, and I’m enjoying the stories and art so far. Apolonster did a fantastic job illustrating each story, and I’m seriously tempted to commission him in the future, be it for character art or even covers.

“Why would you need cover art?” you might ask. “Isn’t that something publishers handle?” And you’d be right…but for the last year or so, I’ve been thinking about a single-volume Tales of the Watchers short fiction collection. This would include almost all of my stories–published and unpublished–set in Anura. “The Gale at Quiet Cove” and “Enough” won’t be involved, since their events will eventually be adapted into Seven Tears on the Tide. Neither will “Rekindling” or “He Who Sows”, as their tones are very different from those of the other stories. Not to mention “He Who Sows” is under exclusivity until late next year.

I’m aiming for over 50,000 words of content, so I’ll likely need to write a few more stories–including “In the Web of Fate” and “One Bitter Note”–before I’m ready to compile the collection, touch some stuff up, and start submitting to those rare publishers who do accept short fiction collections from authors who aren’t household names. If none of them are interested, I may take the plunge and self-publish.

This could be years down the line, but I really want to bring this project to life!

After finishing Ian W. Toll’s Pacific War trilogy, I was hungry for some fiction, and The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane didn’t disappoint. I’d read a few of them before–“Skulls in the Stars” is an old favorite–but only a handful of them were included in the other Howard collection I have, so this was a real treat. Several of the stories–most notably “The Right Hand of Doom”, “The Blue Flame of Vengeance”, and the second chapter of “Red Shadows”–inspired my new approach with “One Bitter Note”, as Solomon Kane is actually pretty peripheral in all of them.

I love the sense of righteousness and moral clarity around Solomon Kane. Not something you see too often in sword & sorcery leads, and I think it makes him a good influence for my own stories about Arlise. All I wish is that Howard had finished all those fragmentary stories. If anyone has opinions on the finished versions of them by Ramsey Campbell, I’d love to hear from you down in the comments!

Back around mid-September, we had a partial lunar eclipse. While it wasn’t super impressive visually, it’s still the first one I’ve had an opportunity to photograph, so I was very excited. Above is a timeline of the eclipse composed entirely of my own shots. Seeing it unfold lends a lot more weight, don’t you think?

There’s a comet that looks like it may peak in brightness around mid-October, so I hope to bring you some more fantastic astrophotos–plus lots of good writing and publishing news–next month. Until then, take care!

Release Date for Sword & Scandal

Great news: we have a release date for Sword & Scandal!

Hardcover proofs have arrived and been approved, so copies are already going out to the backers on Kickstarter. Our editor has set the full release of the anthology for November 12th!

I cannot wait to share my contribution, “He Who Sows”, with all of you. It’s definitely a departure from my usual work, particularly in terms of tone, but I think it’s also some of my best. Expect another update once I have info on when preorders start!

Update: August 2024

Hey, everyone! August ended up being pretty eventful, even though only about half of it went to writing stuff, so let’s dive right in…

First up, my biggest news from August: “He Who Sows” has been accepted for publication in Sword & Scandal! If you follow this blog, you probably already know about that, but it bears repeating. I reviewed and approved the final proof for the story a few weeks ago, so we’re on course for release sometime in the next couple months.

Right now, interior illustrations are still in progress. Earlier this week, the editor mentioned 6/12 were totally done, with others in various stages. If you follow the blog, that’s another thing you know I’m excited about. First time my work has ever received official art!

Most of this month went to recovering from my wisdom tooth removal. Initially, it wasn’t bad at all, but once the painkillers wore off after the first few days, the strain of having my jaw held open for an hour continued to plague me for about a week.

From there, I eased myself back into writing. First with a proofread of a script for an Upwork client, then with a major revision to my background notes for The Captain and the Crown. The Eleutherian League Navy is in an entirely different state and security environment before this book than when I drafted those notes for a different novel (which may never happen or be reimagined), so I basically had to rework everything from the ground up.

I’m glad I did; this new doc will make it a lot easier to think like Captain Korzh and understand the strategic landscape in The Captain and the Crown. It may be a romance, but I want the mil-sf elements to be logically consistent!

Speaking of The Captain and the Crown, I also took advantage of another Canva trial to revise some of the supplemental stuff I’ve created for this setting. I finally settled on a nice flag for the Eleutherian League, and my star map received a major overhaul that makes it a lot better, in my opinion. I’ll be unveiling both of those in separate posts here and as deviations on DeviantArt!

One last bit of exciting news I haven’t mentioned yet is the fact “Hanging at Crosbhothar” has been accepted for reprint as a standalone novelette by Farthest Star Publishing. No firm details yet, but we could be looking at a digital release sometime in late September. They haven’t talked to me since I inked the contract, so we’ll see what comes.

Over the course of my recovery, my constant companions have been the three books of naval historian Ian W. Toll’s Pacific War Trilogy. They’re truly phenomenal, extremely detailed, almost overwhelmingly comprehensive accounts of the Pacific Theater of World War II. I’ve learned a lot over the last few weeks of listening to them as audiobooks, and they’ve even given me some story ideas.

I’m currently about a sixth of the way through Twilight of the Gods, and there’s still almost thirty hours left in the audiobook!

So if you’re looking for excellent military–and especially naval–histories, I cannot recommend this series enough.

Outside of writing, things have been fairly uneventful, which is fine by me. My recovery’s gone well so far and seems like it should be done in the next few weeks. All that remains is waiting for the sockets to fully close. Ensuring they’re clean is tedious, but not difficult.

I managed to fit a little bit of early-morning astronomy in a couple weeks ago. Toured all the planets farther from the Sun than Earth: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In fact, I managed to photograph all of them. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune came out the best, with shockingly clear detail on Jupiter. Io & Europa also make a cameo in that one!

Football season is finally here, so I have another hobby to indulge on the weekends. OSU got off to a pretty solid start yesterday, with a convincing win over FCS powerhouse South Dakota State. I’m cautiously optimistic about our chances this season and really excited for the new lineup in the Big XII. Also curious to see how OU does in the SEC, but I’ll be honest: I’m kinda hate-watching there.

But even more than football, I’m super excited by all the details we’re learning about Dragon Age: The Veilguard! It’s been almost a decade since Inquisition, and I couldn’t be happier to return to the setting and pick up all those tantalizing plots left dangling after the revelations in Trespasser. Plus it’s coming out on Halloween? I know exactly how I’ll be spending October 31st!

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m seriously torn on what to do for my first playthrough. I have a cool concept for a character from the Shadow Dragons–a resistance and abolitionist movement in Tevinter–based on John Brown, but I’m not whether to go that route when we don’t know how free we’ll be in terms of roleplaying. Normally, I just play as myself, more or less, and make the choices I would, but I can’t decide which of the backgrounds works best, especially since I’d like to leave the Shadow Dragons for “Jan Braun”, as I’m calling that character.

Maybe I’ll make a decision before it’s time for my next post. Until then, take care. I’ll see you all again with another update in late September. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for a few announcements!

Official Lineup for Sword & Scandal

As promised in my announcement post earlier this week, here is the lineup of stories for Sword & Scandal, which includes “He Who Sows”. At the moment, this appears to be the order the stories will appear in the anthology, but the arrangement could be subject to change as we near the release date.

Table of Contents:

“The Gateway of Pleasure” by Jim Lee. A knight and a lady from warring kingdoms have an erotic encounter in the feudal land of what is today Vietnam in this dramatic historical fiction story.“Shaven Beards” by Ross Baxter. A man and a woman sellsword learn more than they wanted to know about the secret lives of dwarves in this bawdy comedy.“The Snow Princess” by Pip Pinkerton. A magical princess teaches her special friend Annie new uses for ice in this porn parody of Frozen.“Vermina’s Creature” by Bitter Karella. A malevolent sorceress keeps a manservant as a pet in this gothic comedy where nothing is as it seems.“The Baron with a Thousand Cats” by Gary Every. A groom must save his bride from suffering prima notte with a grotesque baron in this bawdy retelling of a classical Italian folk tale.“Windblades” by C. L. Werner. A comfort woman summons killer demon weasels in a most uncomfortable way in this samurai horror story.“Flesh and Ink” by Rebecca Buchanan. A female assassin’s tattoos hold a deadly power in this sensuous epic fantasy.“Confessions of a Wicked Harpastum Player” by J. Manfred Weichsel and Alexander Joyner. A sadistic inquisitor accuses a female Harpastum player of witchcraft and sapphism in this tortuous tale.“Kai-zur the Godless” by David Carter. A warrior becomes a lover only to learn that love is war in this sword & sorcery story.“Abduction from the Seraglio” by David J. West. A sellsword gets himself into several awkward situations after being hired to abduct a woman from a harem in this adventure comedy.“The Harem of Al’Azeri” by Jasiah Witkofsky. A gentleman out for a night on the town has a serious mishap in a brothel in this pulp tale inspired by the world of 1,001 Arabian Nights.And finally “He Who Sows”

The first and last slots in an anthology or collection often go to the stories editors feel are the best or leave the most lasting impression, so it’s a real honor that “He Who Sows” gets to round out Sword & Scandal.

“He Who Sows” Accepted for Publication in Sword & Scandal

I knew I’d have an answer in August, but I didn’t expect on this quickly: my bawdy fantasy adventure “He Who Sows” has been accepted for publication in Sword & Scandal, an anthology of NSFW heroic fantasy edited by J. Manfred Weichsel!

Set in the Tyrian Dominion, “He Who Sows” follows adventurer archaeologist Tanis of Byrsa and sellsword-turned-gladiatrix Sunna the Savage–a character astute readers will immediately recognize–as they use the debauched festival known as Diluculum as cover to infiltrate a ziggurat temple and steal an enchanted stone phallus sacred to the Tyrian fertility god Yarhib.

As you can probably imagine, hijinks ensue.

“He Who Sows” marks my first foray into comedy, so the tone is noticeably different from most of my other work. But don’t let that deter you: there’s still action, monsters, adventure, and violence galore. It’s just intertwined with humor and steeped in sensuality.

Most of the other stories evoke a similar feel, as you’ll see later this week when I share my fellow contributors in another post. “Erotic fantasy adventure comedy” seems like the best way to describe the theme for Sword & Scandal.

This will be my eighteenth published work of short fiction, and the first to receive official art. Each story will receive a black & white interior illustration by the artist Apolonster, who’s previously worked with Mr. Weichsel. An NSFW illustration, of course. It remains to be seen to what degree me and my fellow contributors will be consulting with the artist, but this news is exciting regardless, since the original call for submissions suggested only three stories would receive illustrations. Once I have some news to share, it’ll definitely warrant a post of its own!

The Kickstarter that funded this anthology should be fulfilled by November, with a full release to follow late this year or early next. Stay tuned for more details!