Alyc Helms's Blog, page 7

Belly Floppin’ Manta Rays

Everybody is posting their anticipated books posts this week. I still need to work on mine now that I have returned to the land of internet. In the meantime, I’m posting cute animal videos!

But not just ANY cute animal videos. My wonderful mom took me on a cruise of Baja/Mexico. On our port days we parasailed in Mazatlan and zip-lined in Puerta Vallarta. I spent my ship-days editing Chiaroscuro (because that’s my version of fun!), and I took lots of pictures of the coast because Central/South...

6:42 – The Mythic Life

Last night, I hosted a welcome feast for the faeries. Like you do. This morning, they let me know that I am on a quest to recover something lost. Possibly a lost dream. Ilbe, y’know how he is. The dream is hidden beneath an overturned cup–cups, chalices, Grails, hearts, all empty spaces meant to hold things like keys, water, blood. Joy. Love. Lost dreams.

I’m an old hand at adventuring, but quests are different. Significant, in that they signify something greater than the sum of their origins,...

Achievement Unlocked! Novel Sold!

The exciting news that I’ve been sitting on since early January is that Angry Robot offered for my novel The Dragons of Heaven and an as-yet unnamed sequel, to be published in April 2015 and 2016. The initial muppet-flailing has quieted to a Fluttershy ‘yay,’ but my enthusiasm is not lessened for all of that. I’ve been riding this high for months, and I don’t think it’s going away.

However, I look at all the hard work and revision and rejection and depression and revision and rejection and dep...

They’re probably not as good as I remember…

A conversation with my friend Carlie reminded me of one of my favorite books when I was a wee teen. It was in the school library, so I reread it a lot. It was called The Keeper of the Isis Light, and it was about a girl whose parents were basically keepers of a planetary lighthouse on an uninhabited world that had been slotted for possible colonization. They died when she was young, so she was forced to fulfill their contract. She pretty much lived alone except for the AI who ran the lighthou...

Release the gulls!

Beneath Ceaseless Skies just offered for my Clarion West week 3 story “A Screech of Gulls.” This is the one based in the same world as my Chiaroscuro manuscript. The one that caused my instructor (George R.R. Martin) to say, “This was bleak. You are a dark and despairing person.”

I still need to get that quote on a t-shirt.

Many thanks to all my CW littermatesfor their support on this one, and especially to Helen Marshall for trading turn-in days with me, to Bryan Camp for suggesting I give a c...

Rarity is my spirit animal

I can wax rhapsodic on the awesomeness ofRarity (from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic). Her story arcs are full ofnuance, personal challenge, and emotional maturity. Rarity finds sacrifice and generosity to be difficult, which is why it is such a victory every time she strives to be her better self. She represents the pony heart in conflict with itself. I adore Rarity for her flawed ponyanity and the constant tension betweenher desire to be the Pony Everypony Should Know and her role as t...

A Dreamstress with a Singer

My friend, Blythe (an eerie Cassandra if ever there was one, and a fantastic author, too. Read her stuff!), referred to me as a dreamstress the other day. I love this term because it is an incisive encapsulation of the sort of sewing I do. I don’t sew clothing. Nothing you can find in a storewill ever emerge from my machine, because bo-ring. I have made one ready-to-wear dress that I never ended up wearing and one hippie skirt that I never finished hemming. I’ll sew for mending sometimes, but...

Every Steampunk Writer Needs a Good Coat

Months and months ago, Beth Cato revealed the fantastic cover of her debut novel, The Clockwork Dagger.

This is a pretty important moment for a writer. This is the moment where you receivethe first and most obvious fruits of putting your baby into someone else’s hands and seeing how those peoplerepresent it to the world. The moment is all the more fraught because authors have little control over this process. There are manyforces at play that are not only counter to representing the author’s v...

Clarion West Write-a-Thon Week 1 Update

I am, demonstrably, already late with my week 1 progress report. Life has been so busy lately that my time has been carved into three categories: write, work, edit.

Thank god for holiday weekends that allow me to catch up!

Anyways, the final edits for “Ill Met in Tanivar” are turned in, and I should have a cover soon. As promised, I’ve successfully written every morning. Well… I’ve written every morning. Some of the writing this week went in a wrong direction, so it might get scrapped. However,...

Yoda can take his tone argument and shove it

Some friends have been posting this article on Facebook, and I realized I had more to say than a simple share warranted.

A few years ago, my dad advised me not to call myself a feminist. He said the word turns people off, turns them away from listening to what I might have to say. I spent a long time explaining to him the road I took to calling myself a feminist, how I resisted it for a long time, how I had to dismantle my own prejudices against the word, my own fear of being ignored and dismi...