R.S.A. Garcia's Blog, page 2

Playing Catch Up

As parts of the world slide into colder weather, it is still steamy as hell here in the West Indies. I’m grateful every day for my new air-conditioning units. The last few months have been a whirlwind of construction, writing, editing, doctor’s appointments and even a brief hospitalisation. However, I’m back to let you know what you missed out on over the past three months (can’t believe it’s been that long).

First, I was honoured to be part of this important piece in Strange Horizons on the global inequities in the publishing business. A Not-So-Swiftly Tilting Planet is thoughtful and wide-ranging, and a must read by the very talented Ng Yi-Sheng.

Second, the audio production of my Locus, Nebula and Ignyte nominated Clarkesworld novella, Bishop’s Opening, is complete at Escape Pod. You can listen to all four episodes for free by clicking here to start with episode one. Dominick Rabrun could not have been a more perfect voice! Thank you to the team there for doing a wonderful job with my story, as usual!

Finally, I am happy to announce I sold a story to Sunday Morning Transport! This amazing speculative fiction site delivers incredible stories by some of the best in the business directly to subscribers’ inboxes on Sundays. I was delighted they selected my story, ‘Mid-Earth Removals’, to be their free story on November 5, 2023! It’s a fantasy romp about a single mom in Trinidad and one very lost minion of a Dark Lord. I’m hoping it puts a smile on the faces of those who read it. And you can also enjoy SMT’s tremendous backlist by clicking here to sign up for a free 60 day trial subscription! I hope you enjoy the reads, and please, feel free to let me know if you enjoyed the story.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who reached out to me to tell me how much they enjoyed my Uncanny story, Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200, as well as those who voted to add it to the Nebula Recommended reading list. It’s made me so happy to see how many of you connected to a kind old lady and a helpful bot. Your response has already exceeded all my expectations. Thank you so much for the support and the love!

Until we meet again, stay thirsty, my friends!

New Stories For You and Other News!

This has to be a short one, everyone, as I’ve been battling a carpal tunnel flare up–my first, yay me :(–for a couple months, as well as trying to get editing and writing done through it. But stuff has happened, so let me catch you up.

I have a new story out in Uncanny Magazine, my first ever with this award-winning venue! “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” is my gentle, funny take on (among other things) loneliness, acceptance and goats. Written entirely in Trinidadian Creole, you can click here to read! I also want to say thank you to everyone who reached out to me to let me know they enjoyed meeting Tantie and Lincoln. Every writer loves knowing people connected with the work of their heart. Always feel free to tell a writer you loved their work. It makes their day, and certainly made mine.

I also sold reprint rights to Escape Pod for my Nebula, Locus and Ignyte nominated novella, “Bishop’s Opening”. Very excited to see what they will bring to the audio, as they did a great job with “The Sun From Both Sides” and “Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma”, the first two novellas in this series. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s up and ready for listening!

And yes, you read that right! I didn’t get a chance to update you all, but Bishop’s Opening has been nominated for three major science fiction awards this year! It’s been incredible to realise how much love the community has for my little found family and I’m so grateful and happy to have been recognized like this. I never expected it! Thank you to everyone who voted for me! I did not win the Nebula or the Locus, and I will probably not win the Ignyte either, but believe me, the people who do win will deserve it, because every novella nominated with me is stunning. I encourage you to read them all, if you can.

I will close with a small appeal, and thank you for reading this far if you see it. As you may know, I have been undergoing treatment for breast cancer since late 2021. I lost my job shortly after my first surgery, and my only income now is from writing and the donations I receive from a Go Fund Me a good friend set up on my behalf. If my work has entertained you, or given you enjoyment in any way, I would really appreciate it if you could donate to my Go Fund Me by clicking here, or even just boost it among your social circles. Every little bit would help in getting me to a place where my financial issues don’t keep me up at night lol.

Again, thank you for reading, and until we meet again, stay thirsty (and healthy), my friends!

The Luckiest Person in the World

It has been one hell of a beginning to 2023!

To be fair, I’ve had a run of unbelievable luck that started last December, when Android Press bought my scifantasy novella, The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine. Then in January, an editor reached out about a slush submission and that has culminated in my getting an agent and being signed to Harper Voyager! I have a scifantasy duology coming out with them next year. For now, I call the series The Waters of Lethe, and the first book will be The Nightward.

In the midst of all that, I found out my novella, Bishop’s Opening, has been nominated for not just a Nebula, but a Locus Award as well! It’s my first time on both ballots and I can’t believe it’s happening in the same year. I’m the first locally based Trini author to be nominated, the only one who has lived her entire life in the islands, and I’m so proud and happy to be able to represent for my country like this.

It’s especially meaningful to me to have accomplished all this during the most difficult period in my life, while I was jobless in the wake of breast cancer surgery. Most of last year, I was doing chemo. I’m only now recovering from that and still have no dates for the next two surgeries I will need to do, but I hope to get them done soon. My house also literally started falling apart, and I had no money for repairs. So I’m especially grateful to my friend, Arula Ratnakar, a talented scifi writer, who helped put together a Go Fund Me last year. Because of the generous donations of friends and kind strangers, I was able to stay afloat and begin repairs to my house.

I still have a great deal of work ahead of me, personally and in terms of the house (if you’d like to donate, you can click here; I would really appreciate it as I’m far from my goal and every little bit helps). I have to edit and write a book. I have to find a way to do this while most likely recovering from surgery and dealing with disruptions from house repairs. I have to get my health back on track while doing hospital visits every month for follow up cancer treatments. The road ahead is not going to be easy.

But I feel blessed and lucky. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to feel my brain coming back online so I can write again. Lucky to have family, friends and loved ones who supported me through all this, and kind strangers who recognized my work and donated to help save my life and my home.

I’m the luckiest person in the world right now. And I have you to thank for it.

If you want to know a bit about the stories that will be coming to you soon, read on for the announcements!

The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine, in which a found family of monsters, demi-gods, scientists and magicians must come together to save what they love and bring a new magic to their dying world. THE NIGHTWARD, pitched as Caribbean mythology meets The Witcher, set in a world where women warrior-magicians rule, a child queen and her bodyguard must flee an attempted coup and evade the strange technology sent to kill her, in a story that is equal parts fantasy and science-fiction to David Pomerico at Harper Voyager, in a two-book deal, for publication Fall 2024, by Cameron McClure at Donald Maass.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Final Chance to Vote!

Hope you had a wonderful Easter! I actually did the traditional Easter weekend kite flying trip with the family on Glorious Saturday, and it was nice to see all the other families at the Queen’s Park Savannah having fun with homemade and store-bought kites. We drove around, bought great Korean food, and just enjoyed being able to be out and about together.

We’re approaching the middle of April and so far the month has been busy. I got inspired a few days ago and ended up writing an entire 6800+ word story in about 8 hours, and the best part is, I really like it. I’m hoping it gets published so you will get a chance to like it too. For now, I’m keeping mum, except to say it’s lightly humourous, which I haven’t done in a very long time, so that was nice.

April 15th is the deadline this year for voting in both the Locus Awards and the Nebulas. I’m nominated for my first Nebula this year, and long-listed for yet another year in the Locus. If you’re a member of the SFWA, I would greatly appreciate if you considered voting for my novella, ‘Bishop’s Opening’, which is free to read on Clarkesworld. It’s only the second time Clarkesworld has had a novella nominated for a Nebula and I’d love to give Neil the win. He puts out excellent novellas every year, and selfishly, I think it would be nice if someone from a magazine managed to win for once lol.

The Locus Awards are open to the public, so if you’d like your favourite works to make the final ballot, you can head here to vote. Feel free to write in anything that’s not long-listed. This year, I’m in several categories, so you can consider voting for me for Best Novella, for ‘Bishop’s Opening’; Best Short Story, for ’12 Things a Trini Should Know Before Travelling to a Back In Times Fete(TM)’ in Strange Horizons; or Best Anthology, for ‘Death in the Mouth’, which contains my short story, ‘A Bonfire in the Night’.

Enjoy the rest of the month! I certainly plan to, as my birthday is in a couple of weeks. I’ll be spending it with best sister in the world while we both get pampered.

See you again soon and until then, stay thirsty, my friends!!

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The Nebulas and Other Great News

Yes, you read that right!

In addition to placing third in the Clarkesworld Magazine Readers Poll, I’ve been nominated for a freaking NEBULA AWARD for my novella, Bishop’s Opening, in Clarkesworld Magazine!

This is as much of a shock as my nomination for the Sturgeon last year. I have only dreamed of this kind of peer recognition. I love what I do, but and when you’ve spent your entire life in a place where there were no clear outlets for your work; when you couldn’t afford to go to university and had to prioritise getting a job to help take care of yourself and your family; when you have never been able to set foot in the country you’ve been published in, this kind of achievement felt like a pipe dream. It means more than I can say that the voters of the SFWA have honoured me with this nomination. I thank them for seeing me and for placing me on this stage. You do not know the joy you have brought me and my family.

Congratulations to all my fellow amazing nominees, who include, I’m proud to say, dear friends like my fellow Trini author, Suzan Palumbo, who is nominated for Best Short Story for her work, Douen. As we have both been nominated for stories that reflect our culture, it feels even more meaningful to be on the ballot this year with her.

If you’d like to read Bishop’s Opening, you can go here.

If you’d like to read Douen, please go here.

Click here to see the full list of nominees.

And kindly keep us in mind if you’re voting for the winner in the months to come.

I also have some long overdue news. I have an agent! I’m now represented by the wonderful Cameron McClure of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. In a year of many blessings, I’ve found my dream agent at my dream agency.

You, my readers, have been the ones to help push me to these heights, and I am so very grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you!

There is more good news to come, so stay tuned!

Sale! Sale! Sale!

Happy New Year and I hope you all had a great holiday season.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Mastodon already know this, but it was a crazy past couple of weeks so I’m only now getting around to this blog.

I’ve sold my fantasy novella, The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine, to Android Press for publication in either 2023 or 2024!

I wrote it last year, just before my cancer diagnosis and it swiftly became a favourite of my beta readers.

“Iris has chafed at a life spent in the service of the Archmagus, the man who rescued her as a child and the only father she has ever known. But when she meets a charming thief while carrying out one of the Archmagus’ many searches for magikal artefacts, she realises it will not be enough for her to simply escape the Citadel and her acerbic adopted family of the Aello, its winged guardians. The Archmagus has lied to her about her past, and the truth she finds will lead her to make a choice. Stay on the path she’d imagined for herself as an unwilling member of a family of monsters–or follow the consequences of her unbearable truth to the unexpected.

Loosely inspired by Greek mythology, ‘The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine’ is a secondary world polyamorous retelling in the vein of Jennifer Saint’s ARIADNE and Madeline Miller’s CIRCE, and the first book in a planned series of novellas about a world that sits at the nexus of Gods and monsters, science and magic. In the aftermath of a war that decimated the “First Gods”, the remnants of humanity try to pick up the pieces. But when conflict arises again, a found family of monsters, demi-gods, scientists and magicians will come together to try to save what they love and bring a new magic to their dying world.”

I can’t wait for you all to meet Iris, Meri and Ash and the post-apocalyptic magikal world they live in.

There may be even bigger news coming down the pipe soon, so watch this space!

A Small Request

Hi everyone.

I recently had to start a Go Fund Me to help me pay for the expenses that come with fighting breast cancer while unemployed, and to get some emergency repairs done on my home. As it’s just me and my sister, and she’s the only one working, we simply didn’t have enough. All our savings were used to bury our mom in 2019 because I had only started my first full time job in 2018 after years of part time employment.

Then the pandemic hit, and my bosses reduced my salary to half to keep the company going, only to eventually let me go because a year of surgery and chemo meant I wouldn’t be able to work. We managed to raise enough to get me through my first major surgery last year. But now I’ll have to do at least four more. Last Friday was the first, and I’m now on the mend, but I have a long way to go.

So please consider donating to my Go Fund Me here.

And if you can, boost and share widely.

Either would be a massive help to me.

So far, I’m at 26% of my goal. But with your help, I can at least raise enough to afford to live during treatment.

I’m still writing as much as I can and I may have new work coming your way soon. So please consider that my gift to you too. You can read most of my work for free in Clarkesworld Magazine.

And if you’d rather get something in return for your donation, kindly consider buying my book LEX TALIONIS on Amazon. I get half of the ebook royalties, and you would also be helping my publisher, who has serious health challenges of their own right now. Links are on my website.

Thank you for reading, boosting and donating. You’ll never know how much it means to me and my family. I’ll try to keep this site and my Go Fund Me page updated so you know how I’m doing.

Talk to you again soon! Until then, I’ll be over here…

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New Stories and Some Updates

I’m terrible at keeping in touch, I know, but I haven’t forgotten you! It just takes a bit to get to the computer these days.

First off, I know many of you will be wondering how I did on my two award nominations. I’m 0 for 2, in that respect, but honestly I can’t be disappointed because it really was such an honour being nominated. I get an AWESOME finalist medal from the IGYNTE’s (will be posting pics as soon as it arrives), AND I got to lose the Sturgeon to a friend and icon, Nalo Hopkinson. Not only is she an SFWA Grandmaster, she’s now the first West Indian to win the coveted award. Congratulations on a long overdue win to an incredibly deserving person!

I have finished my chemo treatment! All things considered, I breezed through with only a slight problem here and there. Now I’m getting scans to see how it worked (things look good so far), and prepping for several preventative surgeries. It’s been a hard, expensive road, and I think I’ll soon need help financially, but for now, my sister has been keeping us above water all on her own, and I can’t express enough how grateful I am for her love, humour, and unflagging support. She does everything for me, and is my best friend, and I’m so happy to still be here with her.

I have also had several new stories come out, so check out the links in the publication section of my blog, or click on them here.

If you’re looking for a great scifi anthology, check out Bridge to Elsewhere. For those of you eager for more of the world of Lex Talionis, my first story in that world since my debut is in this! How To Win Friends And Influence Rebellion takes place between Lex and the sequel, and stars a couple of important characters you’ll recognize, and new ones I hope you’ll come to love. I can’t give you a date for the sequel yet, but I am working on it!

If horror is your thing, the stunning anthology Death in The Mouth: Original Horror by People of Colour, contains my story, A Bonfire In The Night, which has a young girl with a terrible problem, and my own version of a jumbie.

Finally, if you like free reads and Caribbean based scifi, check out my very short story, 12 Things A Trini Should Know Before Travelling To A Back In Times Fete (TM), out now in Strange Horizons, issue October 10 2022. Trinbagonians, this one is for you, as you can tell from the title!

That’s it for now, but I’ll be back soon. More things are coming down the pipes and with luck, you’ll enjoy them all!

Until I see you again, stay thirsty, my friends!

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I’m a Finalist for The Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award!

This update has been delayed by my chemo treatment, but I’m finally overjoyed to announce that my novella, ‘Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma’ is a finalist for the Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award from the Center for the Study of Science Fiction!

You can read the announcement here.

You can follow the links on this site to both read and listen to the story, and the others in its series.

I often say that Philia is close to my heart because it is the most Trini thing I’ve ever written. From the first novelette in the series, ‘The Sun From Both Sides’ to the latest, ‘Bishop’s Opening’, I’ve imagined this futureverse as a love letter to my country and my region. That it would be recognized by an international award is a dream come true. And to be nominated alongside one of my literary inspirations, Nalo Hopkinson, is an honour.

The winners of both the IGNYTE Award and the Sturgeon will be announced later this year. My fellow nominees are spectacular writers, and their stories are well worth reading. I encourage you to do so, and to vote for the IGNYTES once you do. You vote here, any time before June 10th 2022.

The Sturgeon will be decided by a jury.

I wish my fellow nominees for both awards the best of luck, and I look forward to celebrating the winner with you!

I Am An Ignyte Award Finalist!

I still can’t believe it!

My novella, “Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma” has been nominated for Best Novella! And the entire ballot is, appropriately, FIRE!!!

You can read the announcement and full ballot here.

You can read the story here.

Voting is now open to everyone, and you can find the form on the announcement page above.

Congratulations to all my fellow amazing nominees and good luck to everyone!

Now to celebrate!