A New Steampunk Story from Me, WITH GHOSTS

My next short story publication will be "Tipping Point," in a new anthology from Broken Eye Books called Ghost in the Cogs. Coming soon! Here's a description of the book, from their website:

Ghosts. Gaslight. Gears.

In the wondrous age of steam, pirates, rust, and syphilis aren’t all you need to worry about. Ghosts abound!

In this hissing and clanking steampunk world, there are moments that science just can’t explain. All the mechanical geniuses scratch their heads and whisper words of ghosts and powers, of spirits and demons. Possessed automatons take on lives of their own. Superstitious pilots take all necessary precautions. Avant-garde machinists harness the spirits to power their creations. Revenge-minded ghosts stalk haunted gasworks. This is a mechanized playground for the souls of the dead.

I'm really excited about this anthology! Want to know who else has stories in it? Click here for the official announcement! 

The One with the Year Ending

This year was, to be all cliché about it, a roller coaster. BIG GOOD THINGS alternating with BIG BAD THINGS in a way that I haven't really experienced before, most years. I'm not going to get into the bad ones, because I dwelled in them at the time and I don't want to dwell anywhere near them anymore. I think I've learned some things from them, at least, and I'll be using the knowledge I've gained for the rest of my life, which should turn out to be helpful. I think that's the best way to look at it.

So. In my writing and editing news, the good thing that's the most current is my story for Steampunk World, a multicultural steampunk anthology that's now in the last days of a popular Kickstarter campaign! "The Emperor Everlasting" is an alternate history story in which the Incas were much more successful in the world than they were in the actual past you may have learned about. Intrigue unfolds as a royal Deviser is thwarted in her every effort to complete the most important job in her nation's history! Who wants to read about a country that features battle llamas? Maybe you? Then here's what you need to know:

Steampunk World Kickstarter

Featuring stories by Jay Lake, Lucy A.Snyder, Ken Liu, Nisi Shawl, and many more!

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My most exciting professional development was editing my first anthology, What Fates Impose, which was published after its own successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. The fundraiser allowed the publisher to pay professional rates for all of the stories, because paying writers well for their work was one of the top goals for the project. And so we created this anthology of new tales of divination!

 

What Fates Impose

Featuring stories by Cat Rambo, Ken Scholes, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, and many more!

 

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2013 included the planning stages for TWO new editing projects for me, so I'm looking forward to doing that work in 2014! I will write more about those projects as more of the details are sorted out.

 

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There's only ONE MORE MONTH left to get copies of two soon-to-be-discontinued science fiction anthologies that contain stories of mine. It's not great news that they'll be gone, but at least there's time to grab them! Because they contain many wild stories about life in space, including my own "An Assessment of the Incident at Camp Righteous" and "Running in Wonderland."

 

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I did some good reading this year, too! My project of reading a Story Each Day for the whole year fizzled out at the end of August, but by then I had read over 250 stories, so I still feel good about it. That's approximately a million words of fiction, at minimum, which is around ten novels' worth. That's in addition to the other thirty-four books I read! Some of the best books I read this year were:

 

• The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
• Salvage and Demolition, by Tim Powers
• American Elsewhere, by Robert Jackson Bennett
• At the Edge of Waking, by Holly Phillips
• Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, by Sarah Monette
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
• World War Z, by Max Brooks
• Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

 

(I realize that I was WAY LATE to reading many of these, but they were definitely as excellent as everyone had been saying!)

This concludes 2013! Best wishes and good luck for 2014! I'll leave you with a recommendation for my favorite blog, which offers science-backed recommendations for living well and being happy:

Barking Up the Wrong Tree: How to be awesome at life.





I Have Messed Up My Neck

I spent a lot a lot I mean a LOT of time at my computer over the last two weeks. I didn't realize how incorrectly I had been sitting until about a week ago, when that neck I mentioned started to feel sore. But at that point there was still so much computery stuff left do do, with deadlines, that I rearranged the way i was sitting and just kept working. 

I'm testing the Blogger app on my phone from my bed today because that was not an effective solution! For one thing, my neck really needed more of a break, and for another, I kept catching myself back in the same old bad position every time I got absorbed in what I was working on. So today I shall rest this neck in the least painful position I can find, with occasional breaks to gently stretch it and move it around, and I'll avoid sitting at the computer. 

But hey! If this is the price of victory, I'll pay it! Because two big and awesome things are done now: the funding for What Fates Impose, AND my new alternate history story of Incan Steampunk, "The Emperor Everlasting." That required so much research, but I learned a lot of actual history and ended up with a story I love.

This means Victory Mohawk pictures will be slightly delayed (wouldn't want pained grimaces smudging the Victory of it all), but you'll definitely get them! I promise!