Nicolas Wilson's Blog: News about the novels and writing of Nicolas Wilson, page 5

New Release: Selected Short Stories Featuring Cinderella Shoes

Selected Short Stories Featuring Cinderella Shoes is now available, exclusively from Amazon.

Cinderella Shoes contains 15 short stories, covering several genres and styles. Here's a few of the stories therein:

Stiletto: An exotic dancer struggles to make a living after encountering a murder-in-progress on the job.

Cast: The world is increasingly run by robots, which grow increasingly human.

Analog: An ex-Air Force pilot subsists after a weapon disables all modern technology.

Reformatory: A juvenile delinquent and her roommate mature in the aftermath of a devastating assault.

Capricorn: A man wrecks his life and chases fairy tales, while dealing with his young daughter's impending illness.

It will be free tomorrow, (5/16/13), and $.99 normally. Feel free to share news of the free day, to get it out to people. Anyone who sends me the link to their share, tweet, rt, facebook post, or other reference to it, along with their email and preferred file format, will receive a free copy of an unpublished novella, Dogs of War. Help me get the word out, and score some new reading material!

An interview with Michael Brooks, about Whores.

I'm a little late to sharing this- it's been a pretty hectic week. I'm neck deep on some of the near-final revisions on Nexus.

Anyways, Michael Brooks is an engaging author in his own regard, and I enjoyed chatting with him about Whores: not intended to be a factual account of the gender war. Check out the interview here.

Spending so much time listening to others talk certainly gives a writer a leg up on dialogue... On a technical level, journalism is very focused and to the point. It sort of prepared me for the minimalistic style I adopted, one I came to from Didion by way of Palahniuk.

New Interview about Dag, with Troy Jackson

Available at his blog. Lots of fun stuff on my favorite parts of writing (including my embarrassing revision habits)

Though anything can inspire the concept, the story and the drive to finish it comes from my characters. Although I write a lot of absurd stuff (I pitched a novel to my wife as "werewolves in space"), it has to be focused on the people living through that concept. It's not just about the big scary werewolf attacking people; it's about the man trapped in a can with a big scary werewolf attacking his friends, with only a ding dong wrapper between him and the vacuum of space, and it's about his friends' claustrophobia as they flee through the confines of the shuttle, their confusion over whether it's right to kill the beast, knowing their friend is still inside it... That monster has to be as real to me as it is to them, or it's just the literary equivalent of a Roger Corman flick- which doesn't sound too bad, actually, but I think without cheesy special effects, Corman just wouldn't be Corman. But I really enjoy getting in their heads. When I'm writing the crisis out, I don't want to stop.

Dag and Ghost Dust on Amazon and Smashwords!

Lots of big news this week. Ghost Dust, a collection containing 15 short stories, and Dag, my first full-length novel are now available.

Check nicolaswilson.com for an updated list of e-tailers carrying my books. Dag hasn't quite made it to Kobo, B & N, etc.

Stay tuned this week for a pile of authorly conversations, while I run down the last of my social energy. I'll probably be pretty cloistered on Nexus for the next few months.

Dag on Amazon
Dag on Smashwords


Ghost Dust on Amazon
Ghost Dust on Smashwords
Ghost Dust on Kobo

Dag is $.99 through April 26th, so grab it while it's cheap! Ghost Dust is as free as I can make it. Feel free to tell Amazon there's lower prices elsewhere, or to grab it from Smashwords or Kobo instead.

Anyone got any indie speculative, sci fi, horror, or fantasy recommendations?

I'm gathering a list of others' book recommendations, to put together a care package for my wife. She's a fast and very tough reader. I can't keep up at all.

If you've read my writing, you've seen her fingerprints. She's the one who pokes her fingers through my plot holes and wiggles them, to demonstrate how huge they are, and goes on to help me brainstorm ideas of how to fix them. She helps research topics, and fact-check it when it's done. She is one of the meanest editors I've worked with. She helps me any way she can, whether it's offering rewards for me to write instead of procrastinating, mocking up cover ideas to save me time later, or giving up time she wants with me, because she knows I only have a limited amount of time to write. I don't really refer to it as "my" writing anymore. It's ours, though she insists I over-exaggerate her role.

Anyways, this earnest little helper is sick. She's been ill for several months, and hasn't been healthy for a long time before that. She can rarely leave the house; she's cut back on her own freelance career considerably, because one day's work will put her in bed for three more. It's not good for her to be stuck in her head so much, and with me working seven days a week, plus my writing schedule (which she will not let me cut back on) I hardly have any time to keep her spirits up.

So I decided to stock up the kindle with all of the reading she can handle! There's a bit of a story behind this.

The lady and I met in a bookstore. I asked her what book she was looking at, and somehow we ended up trading recommendations, until the store closed. She was going through a tough time then, and the next time I saw her, I brought an armful of the books she'd said she hadn't read. Over the next several months, I think I loaned her every book I own, every time I heard she was struggling. I know it touched her a lot, and she says that the books really did get her through the problems she was having.

Point is, I doubt I will ever meet anyone who loves reading as much as she does, and I want to make sure that she has plenty of company. She decided to boycott traditionally published books shortly after I decided to self publish, since she'd rather support the authors than the publishers. Indie books are sort of hard to discover though, so help me out-

What was the last great indie book you read?

Was there an indie book that really stuck with you, through the storytelling, concept, etc.?

Tell me!

Want more information on Whores?

Here's a roundup of all of the interviews, guest posts, etc. I've written about Whores in, to date.

Interview with Justin Bienvenue

Beyond that, Whores is a dystopic near-future novel about a group of women forced to choose between docility and the right to choose where their life goes. Some of them are in that position by choice. Most of them are there because of crap that happens to them along the way. But it is essentially a novel about a group of freedom fighters/terrorists (and they do quite often walk that line) fighting oppressive elements within their society.
...
It's also about a political undercurrent that's somewhat rooted in a movement known as Men's Rights, but also more broadly articulated this last year by conservative officials. Right now, these views are marginalized, but if they gained clout, if they were allowed to fester, they could very easily roll back even what should be noncontroversial aspects of women's health, like cheap access to birth control. And the more we normalize those types of behavior, the more we offer the appearance of validity to fringe groups that would encourage discrimination, misogyny, or violence in other areas of society. Women's reproductive issues took center stage because access to birth control is what allows women economic freedom, which is necessary for anyone to be truly free.

Interview at Virtual Writers

What’s the principal message you want to send to your audience?

The need to be open. To ideas, and criticism. Whores discusses some difficult topics; they were difficult to write about. They’re difficult to think about. But they’re also necessary, and important. And the proscriptions we hurl have real impacts on real human beings. I don’t care if people disagree with my personal politics, and I’ve had reviewers tell me the book challenged them because they felt so strongly about the premise of it for political or religious reasons. I hope people begin to consider this issue on a more personal level- and I don’t just mean for themselves, because there are larger societal questions at play, here, too, it’s about crafting the kind of world we want to live in, and not the kinds of worlds I usually write about.

Interview with The Review Hutch

...calling the book Whores wasn't something I did lightly. The reasoning behind the title goes back to the old Churchill quote, that victors write the history books. At the time of the story's telling, and indeed even at the end, women are being oppressed, and the title characters are referred to and sometimes literally branded as 'whores.' It's certainly provocative, but honestly, so's the book, and it would be disingenuous of me to have called it anything else.
...
It's ultimately a novel about human beings who just want to be able to live their lives for themselves. They make bad, sometimes rash decisions, but they're really struggling for self-determination, which I think (especially after answering these interview questions) is something we all have in common.

We all have this empty page in front of us, and we don't know quite where we're going with it, but all of us, without regard to age, race, gender or any other way of separating people, deserve a chance to forge through that story on our terms.

Guest Post at The Cerebral Writer

...So I started with a question. How bad could it really get? Back alley abortion is one of those terms that gets trotted out early in any abortion debate. But would they be in back alleys? Certainly not at the beginning. There would be plenty of people with training, and sympathy, willing to put their livelihoods, their careers, and possibly even their lives on the line to safeguard a woman's rights. I imagine most of them wouldn't think about that last possibility too hard- after all, not that many abortion providers have been murdered in cold blood (unless we're talking proportionally).
...
But, as is often the case, asking that initial question of how bad it could really get didn't get us to an answer. Because the answer was really that it could get fairly bad- but that it wouldn't end there. Illegal abortion doesn't end the discussion- it's just the opening gambit. This isn't just about abortion- it's about the entire realm of reproductive rights, and frequently spills even beyond those shores.
...
Black market birth control seems like the obvious answer, and a black market birth control crackdown the obvious render, which would leave every woman with an IUD, the implant, or taking the pill for whatever reason to be in possession of contraband, and a criminal.

Guest Post at Dreamer's Perch

People have called the story(Whores) provocative, and politically sensitive. To me, it describes a hell on par with what women in many other parts of the world currently live in, and a hell that we can only prevent taking hold in more“civilized” countries through vigilance. But to answer them I would say: speaking out about women shouldn’t be political.

Whores was pretty extensively researched, and I'd be here all day trying to list every proposed bill, injustice-revealing survey, etc. that shaped the world built in Whores. This should offer a pretty solid beginning, though. Enjoy!

In honor of International Women's Day, Whores will be free on Smashwords from 3/8-3/10

From March 8th-10th, Whores will be free on Smashwords, in honor of International Women's Day. The UN decided this years theme is "A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women." Whores examines some of the framework that has made violence against women a part of daily life.

Download it here.

Coming April 22nd: Dag

Dag follows Dagney Morgan, a sarcastic Department of Agriculture employee with an affinity for paperwork, has a chance run-in with a farmer covered in toxic chemicals, and walks away with a genetically modified baby, along with the seeds of a military-industrial conspiracy. Dagney and her makeshift family scramble to stay ahead of artificial soldiers and megalomaniacal businessmen long enough to reap the truths behind an international web of corruption and intrigue. They also stop for pie, at one point.​




Check back as it gets close to release, for excerpts.

From April 22nd-26th(Earth Day through Arbor Day), Dag will be available for $.99, normally $1.99.

Coming Soon: Short Stories, featuring Ghost Dust

A collection of fifteen short stories, including Ghost Dust will be released the same time as Dag. These were written years back, before I'd gathered the courage and know-how to tackle novel writing.



One of the stories in Ghost Dust is available to preview on goodreads.

Hang Around is a story of love and revenge as we watch a cowboy, a Buddhist monk, and others live out the consequences of one bad choice.

I'd loosely describe it as science fiction, but it's that's a very loose description. The other stories in the collection vary in genre.

Selected Short Stories Featuring Ghost Dust will be available April 22nd, along with my second novel, Dag.

A little personal check-in, and a release date for Dag

Good morning world!

I feel like I'm barely beginning to catch my breath. It has been a pretty hectic month for me, with a lot of progress, and exciting changes!

Two weeks ago, I was finishing Lunacy, my upcoming novel about a manned MARS mission's struggle to stay on course after a crew member is bitten by a werewolf. It's like Alien, only much more violent and sexy.

The day I finished draft one of that massive undertaking was also important in another regard. After I put the draft down, I had to finish getting ready to marry Nolie, my meanest beta reader, and closest friend.

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A week after that, I'd finished another read-through of Dag, hopefully my second-to-last one. If this all seems fast, blame the woman. She is a drill sergeant. Or a skilled negotiator, depending how you look at it.

Anyways, the cover for Dag has been finalized, and I'm getting ready to send the novel out into the world with love. It's been a crazy month, and I'm sincerely hoping life slows down a little, soon. I still have a few last minute touch-ups on another short story collection, to be released along with Dag.

A little later this week, I'll put together an introduction for Dag, and the first collection of my short stories, Ghost Dust.

Stay tuned! April 22nd is the big day for Dag and Ghost Dust, but we'll have a lot of fun getting there! Excerpts, cover reveals, and random tidbits to come!