Christopher Ruz's Blog, page 6

Athena’s Daughters: kickstarting a collection of women in sci-fi and fantasy

You know who writes fantastic science fiction and fantasy? Women. Well, duh, you say. The entire concept of science fiction as a genre can be credited to one talented woman. Two of the biggest selling speculative fiction series of the last few decades – Harry Potter and The Hunger Games – are penned by women. Five of the last ten Nebula Best Novel winners were women. And yet, science fiction and fantasy is still somehow, amazingly, seen by many as a boys club, where men write for men and only for men. Well, nuts to that. Athena’s Daughters is a fresh project from the excellent folk at Silence in the Library Publishing that aims to produce a top-tier collection of science fiction and fantasy by women, starring women. Yes, it’s been done before. And yes, it’s necessary to do it again, and again, until the idea that women don’t belong in spec fic is dead and buried. The talent lineup is ridiculous: Mary Robinette Kowal, Gail Z. Martin, Cleolinda Jones, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jean Rabe, Sherwood Smith, Janine K. Spendlove, Vicki Johnson-Steger, Cynthia Ward, and Jean Marie Ward. The cause is good, too: a portion of every book sold will go to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the United State’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. And, as a bonus, there’ll be a second companion volume of produced. Apollo’s Daughters will be all about spec fic by men, starring women. The talent there is just as extraordinary: Aaron Allston, Micheal Stackpole […]

Christmas Updates

It’s been real quiet here for the past few months, so I should begin with an apology for anyone waiting on news re: Rust Season 2, Century of Sand 2, or Olesia Anderson #6. I moved house, and things got hectic fast. But we’ve settled in, mowed the lawn, repaired the roof, and I’m now back at the writing desk. So! First, the good news. Olesia Anderson #6: Snowblind launches on Christmas Eve! Snowblind will be available through the Kindle store for a limited exclusive period, and then appear on iBooks, Kobo and Nook. It’s an awesome story that puts a boot up the butt of the larger Olesia Anderson story arc, and I really think you’ll love where it takes the series as a whole. Now, the bad news. Century of Sand 2: The Ragged Lord is still being edited. The second draft has come back from test readers, and reactions have been positive, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready to launch. CoS1 went through five complete rewrites before I was happy with it, and if I want to hold CoS2 to the same level of quality, it’s going to take just as long. I really wanted to have Rust: Season 2 ready by Christmas, but it just isn’t to be. Season 2 is ticking along quite nicely, but it’s still going to be a few months before this baby is ready to leave the nest. I can promise one thing, though: things are getting dark. If you thought […]

XCOM: The B-Team, Chapter 11 – Operation Dying Station

THE B TEAM by CHRISTOPHER RUZ Chapter 11: Operation Dying Station   Table of Contents Note – this chapter was written as a thank you to all the XCOM fans on reddit who’ve been reading my fanfic since the beginning. All six squaddies are redditors. All six knew the risks when they signed up. Good luck, kids. - – - “Did you know that I once considered that squad my B-Team?” Commander Pournelle paced outside the infirmary. He’d just completed a lightning-quick tour of the injured, shaking hands and patting backs, and now he was fighting the urge to throw up. From Major Rudd down to the lowest of his Corporals, everyone was bleeding. Some of them more obvious than others. Shattered bones, plasma burns, spinal fractures. Others, like Alan Zelman, were hurting in places the doctors couldn’t fix with antiseptic and skin grafts. His new assistant, Moreau, just ducked his head. “I wasn’t here when you first recruited them, Sir. But I’m sure they’ve made you proud-” “Cut the weasel-word bullshit, Moreau. I sent them into battle week after week and they came back missing parts of their limbs and none of them ever asked for a day off. I promised them equipment and gave them scraps. I said I’d shift the budget and send them out with SHIV support and all they got was dime-store body armour that wouldn’t stop a .22. They were the last hope and they fought like it, and now every damn one of […]

Ruz at Armageddon Expo 2013

It’s time! Time to dust off my nice shoes and get a haircut and sit down for a weekend of chatting and networking and sales at Armageddon Expo 2013. Armageddon Expo is a two-day nerd extravaganza held at the Melbourne Showgrounds. You can shake hands with scifi celebrities, buy comics, listen in on exclusive panels with authors and artists… or pass by my table, where I’ll be selling paperbacks of Rust: Season One, Century of Sand, The Eighteen Revenges of Doctor Milan, Agent 806 and Zero Error. Also, posters! Also, sketches! You can find me in the Exhibitors Hall against the angled wall, with my good friends Kraden, Carnival and Turm. Come say hi! Buy a book!

Nice new site! But wait, where’s my content?

Thanks to Chris McKenna at Hot Pot Creative, I finally have a 2013-era website! Something a bit less bloggy, a bit more professional, with my titles all laid out in a more organised manner. Problem: the hundreds and sometimes thousands of daily hits I was getting on my more popular articles will now be directed… nowhere. Dang. So to save you some confusion, here are the new links to my ten most popular posts and resources: #1: From .doc to .mobi – making a Kindle book, clean and simple #2: Why 1000 words a day is easy and quick #3: Mx publishes bullshit parkour article, nobody is surprised #4: Get Dirty Deals: Olesia Anderson #1 FREE #5: XCOM: The B-Team, an ongoing fanfiction #6: The Five Best Webcomics You Should Already Be Reading #7: Review: KFC Zinger Burger (seriously, how did this get ten thousand views?) #8: Plot vs Story #9: Album Review: Immersion, by Pendulum #10: Why Editing on Paper Beats Editing on Screen Want more? Check out my collection of articles about the discipline of writing itself, my long list of album, book and movie reviews, my growing list of free stories, and much more! Explore, why don’t ya?

Future Tides: The Collected Works of Christopher Ruz

RUST wins a gold star in the August e-Book Cover Design Awards!

All credit for this win goes to Helen Pinkney, the artist behind the cover of my horror serial Rust. Even so, I’m hella proud. If you’re not familiar with the e-Book Cover Design Awards, check them out and submit your own work (if you’re a self-publisher). The feedback is invaluable. Thanks for the award, guys!

XCOM: The B-Team, Chapter 10 – Operation Brutal Scepter

THE B TEAM by CHRISTOPHER RUZ Chapter 10: Operation Brutal Scepter   Table of Contents The last thing Lewis saw before the Skyranger lifted off was Commander Pournelle standing at attention, snapping a hard salute. Then the back tray closed with a solid thunk of steel, the engines whined petulantly, and they were off. Half a klick into the air already and rising fast, headed for Berlin. The Skyranger shuddered as it banked through ocean turbulence. Lewis staggered across the pitching craft until he found his seat, strapping himself into the kevlar webbing before he flew off his feet. Major Adam ‘Santa’ Rudd grinned across the cabin at him. “How do those leaves feel, Major?” Lewis brushed the little gold oak leaves welded to the collar of his titanium-plate body armour. It still didn’t feel real – Pournelle had surprised him with the promotion only an hour before the mission. A quick handshake, a pat on the back, and then a whispered plea – “Don’t fuck it up this time.” He met Rudd’s gaze. “Good. I think. How’d it feel for you?” Rudd shrugged. No mean feat, seeing as how he was weighed down with about half a ton of ablative armour and plasma powered weaponry. “After Lone Mountain, I didn’t feel anything. Just glad to be alive.” “Boy, do I know how that goes.” Lewis set his own rifle across his lap and fiddled with the power core. Stolen alien tech, retrofitted to contour properly to human hands. Would’ve […]

Ruzkin on Writing – The Formation of a Novel

Almost everyone I meet wants to write a novel, or had dreams of writing a novel when they were young, or has shifted that dream to the future, promising they’ll have a bestseller published when they retire. I ask, Why don’t you write it now? They say, I don’t know how. There is only one way to write a novel, and it is a very simple method. It’s called sitting down and writing the damn book. This is how it’s done. Before you can write a novel, you need to be able to write. I didn’t say write well. Just write. I know some incredible poets. I have friends that make magic happen whenever their fingers touch a keyboard. But being able to write beautifully is not enough to net you a novel unless you can sit down and pound out the words day after day after day for months. It doesn’t matter if you write badly so long as you can sit down with the intention of writing and squeeze the words. You’ll probably end up with a bad novel, but the good writer that only writes “when inspiration comes along” or “when the vibes are right” or “when I have something significant to say” has no novel at all. A novel requires a significant commitment of time. The first draft can take anywhere from a few months to a few years. Every draft after that will take a few months, and every “tune-up” will take a couple of […]

Seriously – GET DROPBOX

There’re only so many times I can say it. If you do work on your computer that you can’t afford to lose – whether you’re a writer, artist, designer, whatever – you need to sign up for and install dropbox. Not tomorrow, not in ten minutes. Now. Dropbox is a free backup service. Once installed, it creates a Dropbox folder somewhere on your compie. Anything you drop inside that folder will be mirrored to the Dropbox servers, where it’ll stay encrypted and safe. When (not if, WHEN) your hard-drive implodes, all your Dropboxed files will be safe and up-to-date, because every time you modify and save a file in your Dropbox folder, it updates the remote copy automatically. Just to clarify, though – Dropbox isn’t an infinite file-dumping area. It’s a mirroring service. That means, everything in your Dropbox folder will be copied exactly into the remote Dropbox server. Add a file in one, it’ll appear in the other. But if you delete a file in your home Dropbox directory, it’ll vanish from your online backup as well. On the other hand, this means you can install Dropbox on multiple computers – home PC, laptop, mobile phone – and every time you boot up any of those computers, all the files in the Dropbox folder will be updated to the latest revisions. Automatic synchronisation of your most important documents across Windows, OSX and Linux. Awesome. So, in summary: 1) Download and install Dropbox. 2) Put everything important (up to 2GB) […]