Sable Aradia's Blog, page 51

2017 Award-Eligible Work Blog Posts & Roundups for F&SF

By Cat Rambo

Cat Rambo is the current President of the SFWA. Just so you know, indie works are eligible for Nebula awards!  Just sayin’. She encouraged me to throw my hat in the ring, and was kind enough to list me on her post. If you want to throw your hat into the ring, all you need to do is contact her. Thanks!

Hello! I’m posting my yearly round-up of eligibility posts. If you’ve got one, let me know by commenting here, e-mailing me, or messaging on social media. I’ll update daily.

Read the full article at Cat Rambo’s blog, Kittywumpus.net.

Friday Friends – from The Vigil by Diane Morrison

Working Title Blogspot

He woke with a start. Glancing all around him, getting his bearings, he realized it was still dark, and most of his travelling companions still slept. Piper, with her mouth agape, was snoring and drooling, as usual. Above him, the sky was a canopy of brilliant starstuff. The Milky Way painted a brilliant stripe across the sky. In the distance, the wind was still blowing over the hollow pipes of the Ancients, like ghosts blowing on bottles.

His father was the one keeping the watch. Colin Walsh sat up on Emma’s carriage with his rifle across his lap. He nodded to Graeme when he saw him sit up.
Graeme crawled out of his bedroll and rubbed at his arms. Cold tonight, which wasn’t a surprise, considering how clear it was. He threw his duster and hat on, picked up his gunbelt, and climbed up to sit beside his father. “What…

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Ganymede: Jupiter’s Secret

“The Ganymede ocean is believed to contain more water than Europa’s,” says Olivier Witasse, a project scientist working on ESA’s future Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE). “Six times more water in Ganymede’s ocean than in Earth’s ocean, and three times more than Europa.”

Read the full article at Daily Galaxy.

My Publishing Year in Review

This year was my year for being stubborn.  Frustrated with my inability to find a home for my Weird Western novelette, in part I assume because of its unusual size, in part because of its unusual subject matter, I decided to publish it myself, and proceed with the Wyrd West Chronicles serial idea I had.  The Wyrd West Chronicles are a Weird Western/cattlepunk/post-apocalyptic Western with high fantasy elements.  I’ve published at least one something about every two months in the series:

In sequential order

Showdown (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 1) (8700 words)
Vice & Virtue (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 2) (11,500 words)
The Vigil (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 3) (16,000 words)
Way of the Gun (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 4) (12,700 words)
Coming soon! The Reaping (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 5) (December 1, 2017) (18,000 words)

An excerpt from Showdown was also published in (SciFan Magazine Issue 7, July 1, 2017)

I also tried to enter the Kindle Storyteller competition, but had last minute issues with the print publication working out, and thus did not make the deadline (apparently; still a little sore about this).  So I published both a print and Kindle edition of Food on Their Table, a medical thriller/dystopian/cli-fi horror (14,700 words):

Food on Their Table (Kindle)
Food on Their Table (Print)

I also published a couple of pieces in my long-awaited Toy Soldier Saga in small press markets.  The Toy Soldier Saga is a fantasy space opera/military SFF.  “Eye of the Storm” is also a planetary romance:

“Survivor” (SciFan Magazine Issue 8, August 1, 2017) (3500 words)
“Eye of the Storm” Chasing Fireflies: A Summer Romance Anthology (Fiction-Atlas Publishing LLC, July 3, 2017) (10,700 words)

By the time the fifth Wyrd West Chronicles installment is published later this month, I’ll have published about 96,000 words of my writing this year (this does not represent what I’ve written; there’s a lot more stuff I’m still waiting to hear back about, and things that aren’t finished yet!)

Still no novels published; that’s a goal for next year.

Just in case anyone is considering nominating me for an award (hey, I can dream, right?): all my work is registered with the Library and Archives of Canada, who issued their ISBNs (and they all have them, even the ebooks,) so they all count as being published in Canada.  And because most major US competitions count ebooks as having been published in the United States, they would all qualify under that condition as well.  Food on Their Table was specifically published for the Amazon UK Storyteller competition, so it was also officially published in the United Kingdom. And by anybody’s standards, I think I count as a new or emerging writer!

Thanks for all your support this year!  I’ve enjoyed devoting this year entirely to my career as a writer.  Next year’s going to be even better!

A Bite of… Diane Morrison

This is probably the most fun interview I’ve ever done! Thanks for this, E.M.!

Working Title Blogspot

Q1: What kind of institution would you most like to be named after you?

I think I’d like a library named after me. I think reading is the most important skill we can possibly learn. They tend to save that for Presidents and the like, though, so my hopes aren’t high!

Q2: Which common technology we have today do you consider to be the most harmful?

I guess that depends on your definition of “common technology.” If you mean “commonly understood,” then I’d have to say that nuclear tech still wins hands down. Nothing else yet that we know of could destroy everything in a single, horrible moment. Even superbugs have medicines usually. But if we’re talking about “commonly used technology,” I’m going for the cell phone. We have already raised an entire generation with social anxiety because they don’t know how to talk to each other in person, and…

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Book Review: The Drawing of the Three

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read (again) for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the Author! Author! Reading Challenge, the Need to Reread Challenge, and the Read the Sequel Challenge.

This is the second book in the awesome Dark Tower series. If you tried The Gunslinger and didn’t like it, this might be a way to make it live and breathe for you. Now into the richly-rendered fantasy world of The Gunslinger, King injects some of that gritty realism we’ve come to know and love, and we meet two of the other central characters to this drama.

It’s difficult to rate these books individually because they’re an extended story, and really, what we’re looking at here is chapters. But I love them just the same. And here we learn that King has come up with an overreaching mythology for his world that ties all of his work powerfully together.

One of the messages that come through is that not everything in our world can be explained, probably because there are cracks where some of the light of other worlds gets in.

On top of this, I find this book to be a riveting, edge-of-your-seat action story that holds on and won’t let go. Again, highly recommended.

View all my reviews

The Gate: Apartment Complex of the Future

I recently wrote a story centered in part around a building that had a lot in common with this. Very excited to see it becoming a reality!

An apartment, retail, and office complex with an abundance of greenery is going up in Cairo, Egypt.

Designed by Vincent Callebaut Architectures, the complex will feature nine cylindrical structures covered in plants, which the designers call “mega-trees.”

Construction began in 2014 and will be complete by 2019, Callebaut told Business Insider.

Check out what the futuristic complex, dubbed The Gate, will look like.

Read the full article at Futurism.com.

Book Review: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read (again) for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the Author! Author! Reading Challenge, and the Need to Reread Challenge.

I fell in love with this series many years ago, and this is my third read of it (don’t remember when the second one was, which is why I didn’t put it in the info). I think this book is probably the most poetic and beautiful of King’s work. This was the one where I realized he wasn’t just a horror writer, and that he fully grasped the nuances of SFF. A lot of people don’t like it, but I think that’s more because it’s not what they’re expecting than it’s a bad book. They read Cujo or The Shining and then they pick this up and are confused. Just pretend someone else wrote it, and read it anyway.

Obviously it stayed with me, because I’m now writing a Weird West series of my own. I think Stephen King would understand.

Recently I read Earth Abides, and I read a scene that sounded eerily familiar. The protagonist was travelling around the ruins of the United States after a great plague killed most of the population, and he looked for a long time into the tunnel into New York, and decided not to go in, afraid of the horrors he would find in there. And I remembered Larry Underwood leaving New York through the tunnel in The Stand. And I realized; this was it. This was the moment King got the idea. He read this scene, and he asked himself, “What would have happened if he’d gone in instead?” The result was a whole new story, but there are echoes of Stewart’s story in it if you know where to look. It’s an homage, of sorts.

Rereading The Gunslinger, I realize I had one of those moments where I asked myself, “What was Roland the Gunslinger’s world like before it moved on? What if it was a high fantasy court? What if there were elves and things too?” and the result is my series.

I mention this because I want to emphasize the enduring quality the imagery and the world of these books had on me, how they stayed with me and fascinated me. And the eerie surreality of worlds with reflections of our own make it more poignant.

The Dark Tower series is my favourite work by King, and I’m a fan. I highly recommend it.

View all my reviews

10 Notorious Female Outlaws From the Wild West

By Skylar Gibby-Brown

1. Pearl Hart

Born in Lindsay, Canada in 1871, Hart attended an exclusive school. However, she enjoyed adventuring more than school work. At age seventeen, Pearl eloped to Chicago with gambler, Frederick Hart. But, Frederick was abusive and Hart left him at age Twenty-two. She made her way to Arizona where she met miner, Joe Boot. When Boot couldn’t make enough dough from mining, the lovers turned to robbery. They developed a routine where Hart would lure a man into her room, and, once through the door, Boot would whack the unsuspecting gentleman on the head and rob him. However, this play was risky and the couple were almost caught on several occasions. In 1899, Hart developed a plan to rob a stagecoach. More money, less risk.

Read the full article at Owlcation.com.

#SpecWomenChat Podcast Episode 1: Women in Speculative Fiction

Welcome to our first live #SpecWomenChat Podcast!  In this monthly show, a panel of both indie and traditionally-published women speculative fiction authors will discuss issues about all things fantasy, science fiction, and issues of interest to women in the field.  Some of us you’ll have heard of, others will be new discoveries for many, but all of us are SFF authors.

Our first panel topic was “Women in Speculative Fiction,” where we discussed what inspired the hashtag, and what issues specifically face women in the SFF field.  Our first panelists were:

Cat Rambo, current President of the SFWA, shortlisted for the Endeavour Award, the Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Nebula Award
Nancy Jane Moore, author of the science fiction novel, The Weave; the novellas Changeling and Ardent Forest; and the collections Conscientious Inconsistencies, Flashes of Illumination, and Walking Contradiction and Other Futures.
Katie Phillips (who writes under pen name Karis Waters), developmental fiction editor and writing coach specializing in empowering women writing spec fiction, managing editor of indie publisher Crosshair Press, creator of the #SpecWomenChat hashtag.

Scheduled to appear (but didn’t make it): Laura J. Mixon writes about the impact of technology and environmental changes on personal identity and social structures. Her work has been the focus of academic studies on the intersection of technology, feminism, and gender. Under the pen name Morgan J. Locke, she is one of the writers for the group blog Eat Our Brains.  (Hugo Award Winner for Best Fan Writer 2015).

Show Notes:

From Dark to Dark: Yes, Women Have Always Written Space Opera by Judith Tarr
Book View Cafe
Aqueduct Press (feminist science fiction press)
Joanna Russ – How to Suppress Women’s Writing: book link;  Wikipedia article
Dale Spender – Mothers of the Novel
Cat Rambo’s List of Women in SF/F
Speculative Literature Foundation (grants for marginalized writers in spec fic)
Parvus Press (If This Goes On anthology submissions)
Worlds Without End SFF Fan Site: SF Mistressworks List; Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge
My books

Want to support #SpecWomenChat? Join our Patreon!

A Note: The automatic Closed Captioning is terrible. I’m working to fix it but it will take a few days. Please be patient with me, thanks!