Daniel Ausema's Blog, page 19
July 7, 2015
Bonus for Spire City subscribers!
Inspired by the poem in The Pedestal the other week, I decided this would be a great time to offer an exclusive bonus for Spire City subscribers. Eagle-eyed stalkers of this blog may have noticed a new poem listed on my bibliography, which I updated last weekend. Well, here's what that's about:
Next week Monday, subscribers will receive not only episode 11, but also a poem I first wrote about half a year ago called "The Exiles Pine for Home." It's a poem as written by the Neshini immigrants living in Spire City. (Some of you may remember a guest blog post I wrote last January, which appeared at The Oak Wheel, about using in-world poetry as a way to enrich a secondary world fantasy.) I have no plans at the moment for releasing this poem in any other format. It may eventually show up in a bundle of some sort, but the only way to be sure you get this poem is to be a subscriber.
Not a subscriber yet? I know a lot of you aren't keen on the whole waiting part of serials. If that's what's holding you back, then now is a great time to jump in and subscribe. Season 1 is 13 episodes long, so the two weeks between episode 11 and the season finale should give you a perfect amount of time to read them all--and get a bonus poem to boot.
So subscribe now and get your free poem, in addition to all the other benefits of being a subscriber!
Next week Monday, subscribers will receive not only episode 11, but also a poem I first wrote about half a year ago called "The Exiles Pine for Home." It's a poem as written by the Neshini immigrants living in Spire City. (Some of you may remember a guest blog post I wrote last January, which appeared at The Oak Wheel, about using in-world poetry as a way to enrich a secondary world fantasy.) I have no plans at the moment for releasing this poem in any other format. It may eventually show up in a bundle of some sort, but the only way to be sure you get this poem is to be a subscriber.
Not a subscriber yet? I know a lot of you aren't keen on the whole waiting part of serials. If that's what's holding you back, then now is a great time to jump in and subscribe. Season 1 is 13 episodes long, so the two weeks between episode 11 and the season finale should give you a perfect amount of time to read them all--and get a bonus poem to boot.
So subscribe now and get your free poem, in addition to all the other benefits of being a subscriber!
June 23, 2015
"The Alien Ruins" at The Pedestal
Everyone needs a little poetry now and then, right? I know I do.
So on that note, go check out my poem "The Alien Ruins" in The Pedestal's latest issue. There's even a link at the bottom to listen to me read the poem. Give a listen to my dulcet voice, then, if that's your preference... The entire issue is full of speculative poems, all chosen by the legendary Marge Simon and Bruce Boston, so once you've finished reading mine, bop around to some of the others and get a feel for what's out there in speculative poetry.
Not a lot to say about the writing of this poem. It began with that opening image of an alien stairway that never feels right to the humans who come later, and simply grew from there.
So on that note, go check out my poem "The Alien Ruins" in The Pedestal's latest issue. There's even a link at the bottom to listen to me read the poem. Give a listen to my dulcet voice, then, if that's your preference... The entire issue is full of speculative poems, all chosen by the legendary Marge Simon and Bruce Boston, so once you've finished reading mine, bop around to some of the others and get a feel for what's out there in speculative poetry.
Not a lot to say about the writing of this poem. It began with that opening image of an alien stairway that never feels right to the humans who come later, and simply grew from there.
June 11, 2015
Special deal for Spire City: Contagion readers
As I mentioned last weekend, the first six episodes of season one were, once upon a time (last fall) published as a separate collection, called Contagion. It was discounted at various times and even, for a one-day special, offered as a freebie from Musa's main page. I never got the exact figures from Musa, but I know many people took advantage of both. Episodes 7-13 were also published as a bundle about a month later, but what with time constraints and the like, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who bought the first bundle and never got around to the second before it was too late.
So...I don't want anyone to feel like I'm charging them twice or taking advantage. For anyone who wants to take this offer, you can get the rest of the season one episodes for just $3 US, by Paypal. What will you get for that? Every Monday from here on out, you'll get the latest episode by email. You will not receive the end-of-season bundle of all episodes, like the other subscription gets you, but you will receive any offers I give to other subscribers.
Is this only for those who bought Contagion? Do you have to somehow prove you bought the other edition? No and no. If you've been buying the episodes individually from Amazon or B&N or if you bought the episodes individually back when Musa was releasing them and only got this far, feel free to sign up as well. No questions asked. (I wouldn't suggest trying to just barrel in starting with episode 7 if you haven't read the first six, though...)
If you have any other questions, check out the Spire City tab above or contact me. Thanks, and happy reading!
So...I don't want anyone to feel like I'm charging them twice or taking advantage. For anyone who wants to take this offer, you can get the rest of the season one episodes for just $3 US, by Paypal. What will you get for that? Every Monday from here on out, you'll get the latest episode by email. You will not receive the end-of-season bundle of all episodes, like the other subscription gets you, but you will receive any offers I give to other subscribers.
Is this only for those who bought Contagion? Do you have to somehow prove you bought the other edition? No and no. If you've been buying the episodes individually from Amazon or B&N or if you bought the episodes individually back when Musa was releasing them and only got this far, feel free to sign up as well. No questions asked. (I wouldn't suggest trying to just barrel in starting with episode 7 if you haven't read the first six, though...)
If you have any other questions, check out the Spire City tab above or contact me. Thanks, and happy reading!
June 10, 2015
Guest Post: Chris Wong Sick Hong
I invited one of the other writers from the anthology Steampunk: The Other Worlds to stop by here and tell us some background behind his story in the anthology. Chris Wong Sick Hong is a writer of slipstream, fantasy, and SF, and you can find more of his work at his website. So here is Chris's post
And a Story Begins
So. A behind the scenes/making of. “Under a Shattered Sky” from
Steampunk: The Other Worlds
. Let’s begin.
Opening tableau: an image of grey, broken dust-swept plains, lonely under a black sky. Bereft. Barren. When I closed my eyes, that was what I saw. An atmosphere humming with the oboe tones of desolation. Sunsets unwatched, a smaller light fading into oblivion.
Now we need people. Since this is steampunk, that constrains the tech level of any civilizations. It will be steam-based. Possibly British, or at least the American stereotype of British. Tea time marked by the anemic ticking of a dying clock. Cricket in space. Fabulous!
Perhaps nomads wandering the world, eking out survival, but not hope, between sandstorms and sullen oases. One mistake way from desiccation.
But no. Steampunk is gears, you fool. Gears and sand are mortal enemies! That would not be steampunk civilization. It would be a post-steampunk civilization. By the Unnamable Old Ones, what in the realms too fractured and disturbed to be called Hells were you thinking?!
Then again, apocalypses are cool. Cool with a Capital Bowtie and Fez. But with a gritty, streetwise, 90s superhero reboot vibe instead. (Anatomy optional.) Sometimes you need to be strong and dress in black pleather just to get up in the morning, because nothing says “survivor” like skin tight.
Still, that’s been done. And to have a proper apocalypse, one needs proper cities. A small band of post-industrial survivors struggling to survive amid the ruins of what they can now only dream—that’s piquant, disturbing, soulful. A small band of survivors struggling to survive because their environment is too harsh for them to develop metal forging is depressing.
Cities it is. Or rather, a city.
And the one thing all viable cities need is a water source. So let’s put it on a lake. A deep one, for dramatic effect. Deep, cold, crystalline, pure.
But how did such a city and lake come to be on such an inhospitable planet? Not just how, but why?
Good thing this isn’t geology/meteorology/archeology pr0n. Human nature is strange. People will nitpick the tiniest details to death but leave the big, flying, robot elephants with laser tusks unremarked upon. Anything big enough fades into the background without question. Just make it awesome and move on.
So while we’re at it, let’s blow up the moon—no, two moons!—and crack the sky too. Two moons to make it clear this isn’t Earth. And jagged, purple, ugly scars sectioning off the sky.
Do I need to work out the complex dynamics of the tides that two moons would cause? No, because they’ve been explosively remodeled. Apocalypses are blank checks cashed in Hell by surly tellers in cheap suits. When even the laws of physics can change, everything can be normal.
Back to the city. Industrialization begets standardization. The only way a machine can stamp out millions of knickknacks that other machines combine into more complex thingamajigs is if all the knickknacks and thingamajigs are the same. And machines are notoriously finicky. They need maintenance, especially parts. The more machines that share a standardized part, the more profitable it is for both the machine owners (lower cost of replacement) and part-makers (economies of scale).
The steampunk ethos was born at the beginning of this, in heady times where the Victorian work ethic and fetish for classification were underpinned by copious use of laudanum and cocaine.
Let’s make this—the drive of classification and order, not the drugs—part of the city itself. Like the design of Washington, D.C., USA. All grids and geometric perfection. Then shatter that too. Echoing reminders of a broken world, broken city, broken lives.
Flesh out (or gear out) the steampunk innards and boom: setting.
Now for characters. I like one. One is simple.
Strong. Female. Alone. Survival horror maybe.
Sitting there, waiting to die isn’t very interesting. Simply struggling for survival, not so much either. The daily habits and activities of remote tribes is a National Geographic Special, not a SyFy Original Event! Get with the sharknado, people. This woman has goals.
To find other survivors, whatever it takes.
==
Pause for a moment. Stories are about people. Ellsbeth, our heroine, needs a dramatic arc. Since this is a short story, it must be compressed. A story centers on significant change or the lack thereof. (I think this is from Flannery O’Connor [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ar...], but I can’t confirm and Google is being singularly unhelpful.)
1) Ellsbeth can realize something important about herself, or fail to do so.2) Ellsbeth can make a choice, for good or ill, that defines who she is and will become.a. Even if the choice is to maintain the status quo.
But the choice needs to be real. What is she doing. Why is she doing it? What adds depth to the choice? What makes Ellsbeth a real person?
A strange figure, stoically wandering a wasteland while refusing to give in. Why does she do it? Because she doesn’t have a choice. Bullshit. That’s not a story. That’s a cliché. Spaghetti western. No name, no horse, but trusty gun at your side (even though if only has three bullets left, they’re the best darn bullets a guy could have.)
People have issues. Living through an apocalypse is traumatic enough. Leaving the safety of a known area to strike out on what must seem like false hope? Even more mind scrambles. She’ll have issues. Serious ones.
Unfortunately, mentally wounded people are not very easy to relate to, or write. If she’s too broken, she won’t be functional. But she also can’t be a font of bubbling optimism. Any good humor would be forced. And if she’s been doing this for years, that’s certain to have been drilled out of her.
So a general plot. What does she have to do to survive? To make progress with her journey? Jot down a general sequence of events, and…then what?
This is not a story yet. Time to add issues. People isolated from society for extended periods of time start to break. Start talking to themselves and inanimate objects. Maybe hear voices back. That’s it! A Voice! Taunting, snide, rude. Trying to talk her into giving up. And possibly real! This is another planet, after all. We have an antagonist.
But what would the Voice taunt her with?
Any perceived weakness? Character flaws? The pointlessness of it all? Feels shallow.
I wrote lots of potential dialogue. It didn’t do much to deepen Ellsbeth’s character. It felt like B-movie boomstick witticisms. But what could do both?
*thinks*
Reminders of what she lost.
Cue flashback.
==
After that, more struggle in story present, and then the choice. With her entire world gone, even the ruins falling apart, and a miscalculation threatening to take her life, why continue? Even she doesn’t quite believe in her own hope.
What does she do? And whatever she decides, will she even know why?
To find out, order a copy of the anthology Steampunk: The Other Worlds today.
And a Story Begins
So. A behind the scenes/making of. “Under a Shattered Sky” from
Steampunk: The Other Worlds
. Let’s begin.Opening tableau: an image of grey, broken dust-swept plains, lonely under a black sky. Bereft. Barren. When I closed my eyes, that was what I saw. An atmosphere humming with the oboe tones of desolation. Sunsets unwatched, a smaller light fading into oblivion.
Now we need people. Since this is steampunk, that constrains the tech level of any civilizations. It will be steam-based. Possibly British, or at least the American stereotype of British. Tea time marked by the anemic ticking of a dying clock. Cricket in space. Fabulous!
Perhaps nomads wandering the world, eking out survival, but not hope, between sandstorms and sullen oases. One mistake way from desiccation.
But no. Steampunk is gears, you fool. Gears and sand are mortal enemies! That would not be steampunk civilization. It would be a post-steampunk civilization. By the Unnamable Old Ones, what in the realms too fractured and disturbed to be called Hells were you thinking?!
Then again, apocalypses are cool. Cool with a Capital Bowtie and Fez. But with a gritty, streetwise, 90s superhero reboot vibe instead. (Anatomy optional.) Sometimes you need to be strong and dress in black pleather just to get up in the morning, because nothing says “survivor” like skin tight.
Still, that’s been done. And to have a proper apocalypse, one needs proper cities. A small band of post-industrial survivors struggling to survive amid the ruins of what they can now only dream—that’s piquant, disturbing, soulful. A small band of survivors struggling to survive because their environment is too harsh for them to develop metal forging is depressing.
Cities it is. Or rather, a city.
And the one thing all viable cities need is a water source. So let’s put it on a lake. A deep one, for dramatic effect. Deep, cold, crystalline, pure.
But how did such a city and lake come to be on such an inhospitable planet? Not just how, but why?
Good thing this isn’t geology/meteorology/archeology pr0n. Human nature is strange. People will nitpick the tiniest details to death but leave the big, flying, robot elephants with laser tusks unremarked upon. Anything big enough fades into the background without question. Just make it awesome and move on.
So while we’re at it, let’s blow up the moon—no, two moons!—and crack the sky too. Two moons to make it clear this isn’t Earth. And jagged, purple, ugly scars sectioning off the sky.
Do I need to work out the complex dynamics of the tides that two moons would cause? No, because they’ve been explosively remodeled. Apocalypses are blank checks cashed in Hell by surly tellers in cheap suits. When even the laws of physics can change, everything can be normal.
Back to the city. Industrialization begets standardization. The only way a machine can stamp out millions of knickknacks that other machines combine into more complex thingamajigs is if all the knickknacks and thingamajigs are the same. And machines are notoriously finicky. They need maintenance, especially parts. The more machines that share a standardized part, the more profitable it is for both the machine owners (lower cost of replacement) and part-makers (economies of scale).
The steampunk ethos was born at the beginning of this, in heady times where the Victorian work ethic and fetish for classification were underpinned by copious use of laudanum and cocaine.
Let’s make this—the drive of classification and order, not the drugs—part of the city itself. Like the design of Washington, D.C., USA. All grids and geometric perfection. Then shatter that too. Echoing reminders of a broken world, broken city, broken lives.
Flesh out (or gear out) the steampunk innards and boom: setting.
Now for characters. I like one. One is simple.
Strong. Female. Alone. Survival horror maybe.
Sitting there, waiting to die isn’t very interesting. Simply struggling for survival, not so much either. The daily habits and activities of remote tribes is a National Geographic Special, not a SyFy Original Event! Get with the sharknado, people. This woman has goals.
To find other survivors, whatever it takes.
==
Pause for a moment. Stories are about people. Ellsbeth, our heroine, needs a dramatic arc. Since this is a short story, it must be compressed. A story centers on significant change or the lack thereof. (I think this is from Flannery O’Connor [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ar...], but I can’t confirm and Google is being singularly unhelpful.)
1) Ellsbeth can realize something important about herself, or fail to do so.2) Ellsbeth can make a choice, for good or ill, that defines who she is and will become.a. Even if the choice is to maintain the status quo.
But the choice needs to be real. What is she doing. Why is she doing it? What adds depth to the choice? What makes Ellsbeth a real person?
A strange figure, stoically wandering a wasteland while refusing to give in. Why does she do it? Because she doesn’t have a choice. Bullshit. That’s not a story. That’s a cliché. Spaghetti western. No name, no horse, but trusty gun at your side (even though if only has three bullets left, they’re the best darn bullets a guy could have.)
People have issues. Living through an apocalypse is traumatic enough. Leaving the safety of a known area to strike out on what must seem like false hope? Even more mind scrambles. She’ll have issues. Serious ones.
Unfortunately, mentally wounded people are not very easy to relate to, or write. If she’s too broken, she won’t be functional. But she also can’t be a font of bubbling optimism. Any good humor would be forced. And if she’s been doing this for years, that’s certain to have been drilled out of her.
So a general plot. What does she have to do to survive? To make progress with her journey? Jot down a general sequence of events, and…then what?
This is not a story yet. Time to add issues. People isolated from society for extended periods of time start to break. Start talking to themselves and inanimate objects. Maybe hear voices back. That’s it! A Voice! Taunting, snide, rude. Trying to talk her into giving up. And possibly real! This is another planet, after all. We have an antagonist.
But what would the Voice taunt her with?
Any perceived weakness? Character flaws? The pointlessness of it all? Feels shallow.
I wrote lots of potential dialogue. It didn’t do much to deepen Ellsbeth’s character. It felt like B-movie boomstick witticisms. But what could do both?
*thinks*
Reminders of what she lost.
Cue flashback.
==
After that, more struggle in story present, and then the choice. With her entire world gone, even the ruins falling apart, and a miscalculation threatening to take her life, why continue? Even she doesn’t quite believe in her own hope.
What does she do? And whatever she decides, will she even know why?
To find out, order a copy of the anthology Steampunk: The Other Worlds today.
June 7, 2015
Spire City, Episode 6: the first arc
Episode 6, "Completing the Map" will soon be available on Amazon and B&N and sent out to subscribers. As those who've read the earlier episodes may suspect, the word "complete" in the title is a deliberate connection to something more harrowing than the word usually means...This is the end of what I always saw as a complete arc within the longer arcs of the season and series, partly as a playful nod to the way many TV shows are structured, with the first six episodes being allowed a certain amount of space to see how they perform before the studio commits to the full first season. So, yay!, Spire City will continue for the full season. All execs here at studio Ausema are in full support of the show. Umm, series.
That also means these six episodes originally made up the first bundle, as released by Musa. For a variety of reasons they decided to publish season one as two 35k-40k-word bundles rather than a single, novel-length, complete-season DVD boxed set collection. So Spire City: Contagion comprised these six episodes (yes, I double-checked Strunk & White to make sure I used "comprise" correctly there...).
That means, if you've fallen behind, then this is a great time to get caught up. Also, this is a great time to let a friend know about the series and encourage them to subscribe, too. So spread the word, and earn my deep thanks!
It also means that there are people who bought the first bundle but didn't get around to the second before Musa shut down. I don't want them to feel like I'm trying to cheat them, so watch later this week for a special offer to them for subscribing to the second half of Season One at a discount. They won't get the full season bundle, so new readers to the series should still subscribe normally, and I'll send out the episodes that have already come out. But they can get the rest of the episodes from here on out. So stay tuned, if that applies to you!
June 5, 2015
Poetry Sale to The Pedestal
Another poem sold! And this one should be out in just a few weeks. I'm hoping to get a chance to make a recording of the poem before then as well, though I'm not sure yet when I'll have the time. The poem is called "The Alien Ruins."
After getting the news, I looked back through my records. The first time I ever submitted to them was in 2003 for a batch of non-speculative poems that I'd written in college. My note in my spreadsheet indicates that whoa, bizarre, they allow online submissions... Those poems plus a college-written short story to Glimmer Train (also online, so bizarre!) were the only submissions I made that year, and I submitted nothing in 2002. It would be a couple more years before I was submitting things with any regularity.
So finally breaking into a market after twelve years...persistence? Or just stubborn luck?
After getting the news, I looked back through my records. The first time I ever submitted to them was in 2003 for a batch of non-speculative poems that I'd written in college. My note in my spreadsheet indicates that whoa, bizarre, they allow online submissions... Those poems plus a college-written short story to Glimmer Train (also online, so bizarre!) were the only submissions I made that year, and I submitted nothing in 2002. It would be a couple more years before I was submitting things with any regularity.
So finally breaking into a market after twelve years...persistence? Or just stubborn luck?
May 20, 2015
Poetry sale to Grievous Angel
Pleased to be able to announce that I've sold a poem to the ezine Grievous Angel. This one is a ghazal that I wrote a few years ago, with a science fictional slant. More on the poem itself and a link when the issue comes out.
May 9, 2015
A kindred take on steampunk
I just saw this on io9, and it looks great. Lantern City is a new comic coming soon, with a free preview at that link. Its overall aesthetic seems very much like how I see Spire City: steampunk as seen from below, mired deep in the amazing new technologies of the factories, but divorced from the sense of wonder afforded to those in high society. I'm not a frequent comic reader, but this looks very cool, very worth checking out.Also check out this interview with the creators of the series. Looks like there's a big vision behind this series, well beyond only a single run of comics: a novel, a TV show, and maybe more.
May 4, 2015
Episode 1 is live!
I sent out the first episode to all subscribers, it's live on Amazon, and...stuck in some sort of limbo on the B&N website... (No, wait, now it's there.) Many thanks to all who have helped with critiques and everything else. As I just mentioned elsewhere, after getting used to how Chels & co. are midway through season two when it was with Musa, going back to the beginning now drives home how much younger they all are (especially Chels), how much more naive. And for some of them, how much more alive.
My friend Andrew Leon Hudson (whose stories you should also be reading) read the series in its Musa incarnation and described it as "a weird sci/fantasy world with insidious biological threats used to clear the streets of the unwanted poor and hints of conspiracy amongst the privileged classes." Which I think is a new sub-genre only lacking a manifesto. So get on that, someone, will ya?
If you didn't get a chance to subscribe yet, don't worry, it isn't too late. Just sign up and let me know your file format preference, and I'll get you episode one right away.
My friend Andrew Leon Hudson (whose stories you should also be reading) read the series in its Musa incarnation and described it as "a weird sci/fantasy world with insidious biological threats used to clear the streets of the unwanted poor and hints of conspiracy amongst the privileged classes." Which I think is a new sub-genre only lacking a manifesto. So get on that, someone, will ya?
If you didn't get a chance to subscribe yet, don't worry, it isn't too late. Just sign up and let me know your file format preference, and I'll get you episode one right away.
April 30, 2015
Guest post for Sam Knight
This actually went up a couple of weeks ago, and I neglected to mention it here... I had a guest post at the blog of Sam Knight, who is the editor for the Steampunk: The Other Worlds anthology. It's about the story in that anthology, Spire City...and Mario Vargas Llosa. Am I above mentioning my own writing in the same breath as a Nobel Prize winner's? Not at all, not at all...
