Daniel Ausema's Blog, page 3

The Boatman Statue an editor's choice in Star*Line

I have a new poem out this week! "The Boatman Statue" is in the latest issue of Star*Line, and because the poem was selected as an editor's choice, it's available to read online, as a teaser to get you to buy the full issue--or even join the SFPA and get every issue for free!

This poem was inspired in part by some art another poet found on Deviant Art and shared as a prompt: "The Passage of the Damned" by PeterKmiecik.

The Quartermaster Trial live!

 

"The Quartermaster Trial" is live now on Mythaxis. It's a companion piece to the story "The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds," which was published in Mythaxis two years ago. The characters are different (well, except for one who may not exactly count...), but this returns us to that world of dimension-hopping conveyors and lived-in, breaking-down technology.

When Andrew accepted the earlier story, he suggested I should send him some more stories in that setting. I didn't have more stories... But doesn't mean I couldn't consider writing more.

Around the time the story came out, I was tinkering around with the opening to this. It wasn't coming together, so I set it aside. A few months later, I took it out again and wrote the rest, but by then the bulk of the story didn't quite match up with the opening I'd written earlier. So I set it aside again and only finally got it all working together in this form late last year/early this--just in time for Mythaxis' January submissions period.
So now you get to read Paikle and the way of life for the peoples who scavenge for scraps along the conveyor routes.
Will there be more Conveyor-worlds stories? Time can only tell.

An online reading...and cover art!

I'm doing an online reading this evening! Tonight at 7:30 pm Pacific time, there will be a live viewing of Fae News on YouTube. (I'm not in Pacific time, but they are, so that's the time I'm giving--do the math to figure it out, just like I have to... :p ) I'm scheduled to appear around 8:00 Pacific. If you're up at that time, I'd love to have you tune in to listen to me read, join in the comments section, enter a drawing for a copy of The Silk Betrayal, and catch up on...whatever happens to come up during the show.

Hope you can make it!
***Oh yeah, and there's cover art for The Roots of Betrayal...and a new landing page for the novel on Guardbridge Books' website. Pre-order and ordering links will go live as they become available (one is already available...).
What's the story about?

Terrorists attack the Princes, Outcasts build a new city, and the mage Pavresh discovers that Arcist Magic is more powerful than ever imagined.

Poem "Unveiling the Moon" in ETTT

Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on UnsplashContinuing with catching up, my poem "Unveiling the Moon" is in the 44th issue of Eye to the Telescope. Like all the poems in this issue, it is a poem about an imaginary work of art, in this case about an artist who designs a moon.

Speaking of poetry and the SFPA (which sponsors ETTT), I have also just received my physical copy of the Rhysling Anthology, and it looks great. It has the nominated poems for this year's award (including the one by me...).

Goddess of the Braided Light Drive in New Myths!

Photo by Akshar Dave🌻 on UnsplashIn my last post I mentioned this story, which sold to New Myths. And it was published soon after that, so in the interest of catching up on some of the things have been slipping through my fingers in the chaos of recent months, here is the story: "Goddess of the Braided Light Drive."

This was a story I wrote a few years ago when I decided to do a bunch of short stories for NaNo instead of a novel. Before the month started, I jotted down some ideas of what stories I might write, and one was to write something that captured some of the feeling I get from some of Yoon Ha Lee's SF stories. Sometime when I wasn't by that list of ideas, I had the idea of a braided light star drive and filed that away...

And forgot it by the time I got to writing a space-based SF story. I wrote one with a card game and inter-planetary politics instead (and I still hope that one gets published so you can read it too, sometime...). Then I remembered about the braided light idea, and the month wasn't over, so I wrote it as well. I think there's some Gene Wolfe influence in there as well, especially The Book of the Long Sun. It ended up with some mythic undertones and a character who chooses to use the superstitions of the people around them for their own benefit.

Enjoy! (and stay tuned for more to come...)

Enjoy

February whirlwind of news...

February turned out to be a crazy month, with most of the craziness coming in the span of a week. I'm still rather dizzied from it, so this will simply be a rundown of what's happened:Spire City: Occupied was released as an ebook. It will remain available on Kindle Vella and on Ko-fi as well.
There is a "forthcoming" page for  Arcist Chronicles #2: The Roots of Betrayal  on my publisher's website! And I've seen a couple possibilities for the cover art, and either one is great. Can't wait to share it with you!
"The Cities Rise up on Legs of Lead" was published in Daily Science Fiction. It's a story of cities that take on a towering, human-like form and...battle? The residents of the cities are eager to see what their homes will do.
I also sold a new story to DSF--"The Forgotten Treaties of Wildfire and Feathers." So watch for that coming up!
And I sold a story to Mythaxis. "The Quartermaster War" will be my second story in that magazine and shares a setting with the previous story there, "The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds."
That's not all--my SF story "Goddess of the Braided Light Drive" has been accepted by New Myths, my fourth story to appear in that magazine.
And one more thing... my poem "The Forbidden Path to Forgetting," which was published by Fantasy Magazine, has been nominated for a Rhysling Award! Many thanks to the person or people who nominated it!Phew, I'm sure I'll have more to say about all of these items in time, but for now I just want them up here on record. Happy March!

Spire City: Occupied ebook up for pre-order

 

Spire City: Occupied is going to remain on Kindle Vella, at least for now, but it is also going to be released as an ebook in a few weeks (on my birthday, as a matter of fact!). So if that's how you prefer to read your books, I'd love to have a healthy number of pre-orders in place when the book releases! And if a print book is your preferred way to read, then just know that it's in the works as well and should be out in another month or so, if all goes to plan.
Thanks, as always, for reading!

Weird Christmas flash!

I was traveling over the New Year and didn't get a chance to post this until now, but the results of the Weird Christmas flash contest went up just before New Year's Day, and the audio for the episode went up a few days later.

And my story "The Power of Presents and Spidersilk" won in the Stocking Stuffer category! Of the three categories it was the biggest, with something like 400 entrants, so I'm very thrilled, of course. I aimed for solidly weird--the story includes spider-elves, an eel-drawn sleigh, and begins: 

Santa, the jolly old frog, croaks his delight at the shiny new swamp-sleigh. Candy red with green trim, just as he ordered. Decorated green, for the blood of his defeated enemies the lizards...

So give it a read, and give the podcast a listen (you'll hear me reading it!). Some other writer friends are among the winners and honorable mentions, and you'll find a delightful range of weirdnesses to satisfy whatever seasonal mood you might be in or want to delve into.

"A Chance to Breathe" published in Zooscape!

 My story "A Chance to Breathe" is in the latest issue of Zooscape. This is a story I wrote years ago and could never find the right market for--until now. There are three main inspirations for the story: 

1) My grandma's family immigrated to what was then New Mexico territory because the Dutch doctors recommended it for the tuberculosis that both her mother and grandfather had. Her grandfather died within a few weeks of their arrival (well before she was born), but her mother went on to live a long life in south-central Colorado. I've always been fascinated by their story, and it creates the basis for another of my favorite stories as well, "The Desert Cure."

2) The image of the Victorian consumptive, the young and beautiful maiden who dies before her time--not the reality of the sickness, but the way it gets turned into a SYMBOL (I say, somewhat tongue-in-cheekly). Especially, if I remember right, I was thinking about how the book Winter's Tale uses that image, with the girl who sleeps on the roof because the cold air is a relief. (Admittedly, it's been a long time since I read that book, so the particulars are less part of that image than the general sense of it.)

and 3) Shaun Tan's utterly amazing, wordless graphic novel The Arrival. It's a lovely book that celebrates the arrival of an immigrant to a new land where everything is strange and unfamiliar.

Earlier this year, on one of the writing forums I'm on, we had a thread going of favorite stories that can't seem to find a home. And this was the one I mentioned, a story I've been sending out, getting rejected, revising as necessary, and sending out again for so long, because it was a story I kept believing in. I'm so happy to be able to share it with readers at last! So with that...give the story a read, and enjoy!

Award Eligibility 2021

Are you reading for award nominations? Just curious for an update on publications? This is what I've had published in 2021:

Novel: 

Spire City: Occupied (serialized on Kindle Vella/Curious Fictions/Ko-fi)

Short Stories: 

"Triptych of the Final String" in New Myths (flash)

"The Mirror Merchant's Tales" in Daily Science Fiction (flash)

"Fire and Death and the Terror of a Fair Barker, Enraged" in Festival of Fear anthology (drabble)

and for awards that count December of the previous year, "The Bridge Fugue: Variations on Emptiness" in Daily Science Fiction, Dec. 15, 2020 (flash)

Poems:

"The Pelagic Colossus" in Star*Line 44.3

"The Forbidden Path to Forgetting" in Fantasy Magazine