A.G. Carpenter's Blog, page 6

Forthcoming! (Update 6.22.15)

This weekend I will be at LibertyCon. If you will be too, you can check my schedule here.

I also have two new novelettes coming out in July. In an effort to make my stories easier to find and obtain I am publishing reprints of my backlist and releasing a few brand spanking new things this year.

First up is Legacy. A steampunk tale set in Savannah and Lake Ponchartrain, this was originally published in Beast Within 4: Gears & Growls (Graveside Tales, Oct. 2014). It's a lovely, dark action ad...

"Fixing" Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy

A couple of months back I was on a panel at a local con titled Diversity in Fiction: What is it, How to do it, and Why. As the panelists (many of whom didn't know who else was on the panel) came in and sat down there was a bit of an awkward moment as we all recognized that the panel was basically white. But we figured we were there to talk about writing diverse characters so we'd roll with it.

But the first question came from a PoC woman in the audience who demanded with some intensity to know...

Beginnings and Growth (Update 3.20.15)

While digging through stuff post-move, I ran across my first "novel". It clocked in at a stunning 164 pages and I wrote it when I was in high school. It was fun - a little space opera involving interplanetary intrigue - and also spectacularly awful.


Just for fun, here's the first page. (I don't think I ever titled this anything other than Shasta. Also, note the rip of the planetary name? I was a big Star Wars fan and had a crush on Han Solo and thought it would be totally cool to borrow Corill...

"Just Write A Good Story"

There are always a lot of advice-pellets regarding writing.
"Show, don't tell."
"You can't fix what isn't on the page."
"The story starts where the action begins."
"A chapter/book is as long as it needs to be."

We've all heard them. We've probably repeated a few of them or even printed them out and taped them over our writing spaces. (Somewhere online is the certificate that gives each writer permission to write a crap first draft.)

Sometimes those pieces of advice get taken the wrong way or offere...

Persistence (Update 1.31.15)

This week I finished another round of revisions on the newest "little novella that wouldn't quit" and polished the synopses for a potential pitch from "kind of okay" to "OMG! EPIC!". (At least that's how it felt this morning when I finished three cups of coffee and the last half of the synopsis for book three.)


With this project, I succeeded, once again, in setting deadlines I didn't meet and turning a fairly simple plot idea into a complex and emotional little book that makes me *SQUEEE* a li...

2014: Another Year Gone

This past year I accomplished a number of things. Among them:

I found a fantastic literary agent.
I wrote approximately 280k words on various novels/novellas; including heavy revisions to The Steampunk Novel, finishing/revising The Spider Thief and The Assassin King, and finishing/revising The Super-Secret Project. (The rest of the words written were on Old Guard - a space opera, and Thingbreaker - a magicpunk novel. But neither of them have reached a "finished" state yet.)
I attended my first...

Short Fiction in 2014

I've not had a lot published this year, but as the SF/F awards season starts to gear up, I thought I would share what I've had published this year.


Vessels for Destruction - Nature Magazine: Futures (Feb 6, 2014)


The Collections Agent - Stupefying Stories (Feb 14, 2014) [Now as an ebook reprint]


The Spider Thief and the Sorcerer - Crowded Magazine (May 15, 2014)


Legacy - Beast Within 4: Gears & Growls (October 31, 2014)

Momentum (11.13.14)

For several years I've been a bit of a NaNoWriMo rebel, taking the month as an added incentive to revise existing projects rather than tackle new ones. It's not because I don't like working on new material, but there are priorities to consider.


Last year I was working on revisions to the Steampunk Novel. This year I started the month finishing up a novella I'd started in September. (Finished on Monday at 34k! Woot!) Now I'm focusing on the first draft of a new novel I'm hoping to finish before...

Ups and Downs (Update 11.5.14)

It's November and that means that the NaNoWriMo hashtag is trending on Twitter and writers of every stripe are hunkered down working on banging out a minimum of 1667 words a day.

Of course, for some November is an awkward month to try and hit 50k in 30 days. The end of the month has the opening of the holiday season. For folks in school there are exams and the impending end of the year crush of papers and projects. But, many of us take up the challenge even knowing that we won't likely make th...

Publication and Wordage (Update 10.31.14)

First, a little publication news. I have a story available on QuarterReads. It's neat little site that has a collection of short fiction, each story is available to read for the low price of twenty-five cents. Mine can be found here: Call-Center


You can expect some of my other short stuff to be available there before too long. Once I get a chance to submit it and everything. 

Also, as I announced last week, Beast Within 4: Gears and Growls is available today! It contains my short story "Le...