Author: Alex

Categories
writing

Award Eligible Work for 2014

Sure is that magical time of year again! So, this is what I had published in 2014!

Short stories:

Novelette:

All of it is available, free to read, online at the above links. If you have limited reading time, I urge you to read They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain first, then The Heart-Beat Escapement, and then What Purpose a Heart. Stories marked with the green stars contain LGBTQ material.

I also urge you to nominate the Skiffy and Fanty Podcast in fancast and podcast categories! And I’m not just saying that because I’m one of the regular hosts.

I wrote six episodes of the Six to Start game Superhero Workout. The game as a whole is pretty awesome and deserves to be nominated for things as well if you ask me!

Categories
steampunk writing

Happy Book Day to Me!

So… it’s a book! An anthology, more exactly, of the five Captain Ramos novellas. Just in time for more new novellas to come out. (Soon. Very soon.)

I’ve been working on this for a while, coming up with some new material to go with the five novellas. And a title as ridiculous and awesome as Sausages, Steam, and the Bad Thing: a compendium of (mis)adventures both dashing and dire of that most infamous pirate, Captain Ramos is not just going to write itself.

And it may or may not include an extra little story about everyone’s favorite, face-eating, tiny dog, Chippy. (It totally does.)

Go! While the cake book is still fresh and warm from the oven! It’s at the Musa Publishing site!

Categories
writing year in review

2014 Writing Year in Review

Written This Year

Novels: I finally, finally, finally finished King’s Hand during Thanksgiving break. I am dreading the editing because it is a hot mess and then some. And then I immediately started a new project currently called Wrath: a Love Story because I hate myself. I also put together an anthology of the Captain Ramos novellas, which involved writing new material to go with each one!

Shorter Stuff

  • Flash: 2
  • Short Stories: 3? :( Though I did serious re-edits on 3 older short stories.
  • Novellettes/Novellas: 4
  • Short Scripts: 20 (oh, okay, that’s where all my writing time went)

Consigned to the trunk of awfulness, never to return: Only one, though safe to say that at least 5 of the short scripts haven’t been so much put in the trunk as just written in there to begin with for practice.

Best/favorite story of the year: Actually, my favorite is one of the episodes I wrote for Six to Start‘s Superhero Workout game. Because it involved a ludicrous number of references to various musicals. And even though I wrote They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain last year, I’m super stoked about it having been in Women Destroy Sci-fi‘s limited edition print book and getting to be in Lightspeed!

Magic Spreadsheet Wordcount: I started tracking on the magic spreadsheet on June 24, 2013.

  • Wordcount is at: 562,047, which makes it 353,488 for the year
  • Average words per day: 968 (I can live with that)
  • Days in a row written at: 555 so that means yes, I’m at over a year of writing at least 250 words every day!

Publishing
Queries sent: 38
Rejections received: 31
Pending: 6
Most rejections received: Definitely Flash Bang, the Long Game, which now has 21 rejections total, and collected 7 of those this year. Most of the rejections I receive are not form and very complimentary. No one wants it. I refuse to give up.
Total earned: $3,109.24, a large portion of which is thanks to Six to Start. Still significantly in the red considering my outlay, but I have zero complaints. It was a pretty awesome year in that standpoint, even if I’m disappointed in my query numbers.

Published this year:

  1. They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain from Lightspeed Magazine (Payment was donated to UNICEF UK.) (12/1/14)
  2. Six episodes of Superhero Workout Game
  3. Asleep in Zandalar from Abyss and Apex (6/30/14)
  4. List of Items in Leather Valise Found on Welby Crescent from Shimmer #19
  5. What Purpose a Heart from Scigentasy (5/3/14)
  6. The Heart-Beat Escapement from Crossed Genres (4/1/14) and a little bonus material
  7. Perfect Blue, Scorched Black from Perihelion (2/12/14)
  8. A World of Speculation from Lakeside Circus (2/8/14)
  9. And Still Champion from The Lorelei Signal (January 2014)

Slated for 2014: 

  1. Only a Crack in a Black Glass Wall in Welcome to the Future
  2. The Adventures of Captain Ramos: Year One (collection) from Musa Publishing
  3. The Flying Turk from Musa Publishing
  4. Extradition from Musa Publishing
  5. Concerning Minister Wu’s Tea from Musa Publishing

Stories put online this year: 

  1. Midnight Baking

Goals for 2015: 

  1. Shut up and write. Always.
  2. Keep plugging away at the new novel.
  3. Write at least one feature-length screenplay because I believe I can do it.
  4. Then cry because I will have yet another long thing sitting on my hard drive and slushpile hell argle bargle weh weh weh fart noise sad trombone.
  5. I can still dream of having an agent, can’t I?
  6. Birthday story for Mr. TH. I know what I want to write. Just have to do it. Don’t choke, self.
  7. Finish editing second novella I owe Musa. Write the third and turn it in. Come up with proposals for one or two more for 2016.
  8. Write at least one brave, difficult, strange story that makes me weep at my keyboard.
  9. Write a few more short stories. Be better about slushpiling novels.
  10. Speaking of, get Throne of Nightmares out into a slush pile already. (Fire in the Belly actually is sitting in another, currently at four months and counting…)
  11. Submit some shorts to a festival or two because Sera believes in me.
  12. Get back out there and look for more script writing freelance work.

Other/Personal Shit

  1. Have been involved in the terrifying and Byzantine process of planning to shoot a short film. And I haven’t even been doing the difficult stuff, holy shit.
  2. Survived my first workshop at work, presented a well, wore a bow tie while doing so and looked goddamn fabulous.
  3. Had surgery on the big toe of my left foot. You know how I said shoulder surgery sucks? I’m honestly starting to feel like this foot surgery has sucked way more. Something to do with that whole foot being constantly in use due to walking and standing thing.
  4. Got divorced.

It’s been an interesting year.

Categories
writing

Go Read My Story

They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain is now available online at Lightspeed. (You should subscribe to Lightspeed anyway, you know, even though you can read the story for free now.) You should go read it, because it’s quite literally the best thing I’ve written to date and is incredibly important to me as a story. It is about lies, and frankly, the fact that PTSD kills.

Oh yeah. And the money from it went to UNICEF UK. If you think it’s a good story and have the spare money, you should subscribe to Lightspeed and/or donate to UNICEF. Hell, if you hate the story and think I’m a fucking hack, you should do one or both of those things anyway.

Enjoy, and please tell your friends! AAAA THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!

Categories
liveblog movie

Snowmageddon?

So the TV is on and my friencd just turned it to Syfy and Snowmageddon. I think the movie is already in progress. I don’t think it matters. A giant snowball just blew up a school bus and decapitated Santa.

LIVEBLOGGING COMMENCES.

(If only we’d started drinking. Damnit.)

1358: Commercials. A tiny woman is watching a movie on an iPhone. Bowls of fruits are covered by CGI mold.

1400: Back to the movie. Everyone keeps looking up at a mountain that’s shrouded with clouds. I think this must be their displeased god who is chucking giant snowballs with them. Aha. They are in Alaska, I think? The man just said something into the radio about Alaska. The man in flannel is also Park Ranger. You know this because his building says Park Ranger.

1402: Okay so if this actually does take place in Alaska, why is everything green at Christmas time? I thought that was when it was endless night and snow vampires ride moose through the streets.

1402: Norm’s hurt really bad. Apparently. In a green bus festooned with greenery. It has a live power line on it. Which means no one can get in, but somehow Norm and his friend can lean against the metal sides of the bus inside. Because SCIENCE.

1403: Just like that, it’s over. No, blonde girl. It has ONLY JUST BEGUN. We don’t care about your family drama. Give me more snowy death.

1403: The little boy is a fantasy nerd who plays games. CHARACTERIZATION.

1404: Are they implying that the mountain is a volcano? I mean, the ominous look at the fake volcano on the game board seems to imply that. But that mountain sure doesn’t look like a stratovolcano.

1405: What have we got? A helicopter crash, apparently. Two blonde ladies struggle against the elements. Everyone has mouth blood and a head wound because those are probably the easiest injury makeups to apply.

1407: If you don’t touch the bus and the ground at the same time, you can jump free! WHAT?

1408: Two women battle desperately against a seatbelt. Okay then. But hey, you’ve got a snazzy quilt now! AND NOW THE WRECKAGE IS ON FIRE.

1417: We are still trying to figure out where the fuck these people are located geographically. Disaster on the mountain, blah blah. Sad people with head wounds in snow. There’s a guy that’s showed up with a snow cat after maybe ten minutes, so apparently the super snow mountain is like RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the green valley where you only need a little flannel jacket and geography, how the fuck does it work.

1418: Someone is going to attempt to fix the power situation with a pair of wire cutters. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

1419: Oh, we have improved from wire cutters to a sledgehammer. BEST ELECTRICIAN. He whacks the power thing with the sledgehammer. SPARKS!

1421: DOOMY DOOM DOOM SCARY CLOSE UP OF GAME BOARD AND NOW THERE IS AN AVALANCHE

1421: hahaha the guys is driving the snowcat away from the avalanche. Oh thank fucking god the avalanche overtook them or I’d be pissed, it’s like driving a car away from a fucking pyroclastic cloud.

1422: AND NOW THE BUS IS ON FIRE BECAUSE OF COURSE IT IS. This is how this movie rolls. The situation is bad. Things happen. AND THEN IT IS ON FIRE.

1423: The bus has now exploded. I repeat. The bus has now exploded. Farewell, Norm. Norm’s scruffy friend appears to have been thrown free of the conflagration.

1430: You have been buried by an avalanche. You are not going to be able to just drive the snowcat out. Even if you alternate between forward and reverse.

1430: MORE OMINOUS BOARD GAME SHOTS IN THE RUSTIC CABIN OF DOOMY DOOM. Rudy, the nerd leaves a note saying he ruined everything, it’s all his fault. Sure. Why not. Maybe he wrote the script for this film.

1432: No one is coming to help the mysterious town. It’s like they dropped off the map. THAT’S BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE FUCK YOU EVEN ARE, NOT EVEN THE WRITERS.

1436: The people who were on the giant mountain with the avalanche are, five minutes later, down in the valley that appears to be somewhere in the pacific northwest, maybe. There is no sense of distance or time in this thing. At all.

1442: Wandering around, looking for Rudy. Now it’s the people off the mountain looking for him.

1444: MAGIC SNOW GLOBE OF EVIL EVILNESS. SHAKE IT UP YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

1445: “You think this snow globe is cursed, or maybe the globe cursed the town.” Lines that only an actor could deliver straight-faced.

1456: And now a town meeting about the snow globe.

1458: ASK NOW FOR WHOM THE SNOW GLOBE TOLLS. Something is happening. Yes, did you hear the bass rumble of the soundtrack? HAHAHAHA WOODEN SPIKES ARE SHOOTING OUT OF THE GROUND. This is kind of amazing actually.

1459: Derrick is on the ground and bleeding. I would find this a more believable and awesome death if he was actually spitted on one of the spikes.

1500: Oh back to Rudy’s game. It’s based on Hephaestus and Pandora! Pandora’s box contained a snow globe apparently! Yeah! And now it needs to be tossed into the volcano but… where is there a fucking volcano.

1504: THE SHITTY CAR GOT SPIKED AHAHAHAHAHA okay apparently my liveblog has to end because I need to take a shower and we are going to Chuy’s. And Chuy’s? Chuy’s >>>>> shitty movie. But it’s been fun. I got to end on a hilarious note.

Categories
personal

Dear Santa ’14

It’s that time of year when people are asking about wish lists and stuff, so here it is.

Categories
for fun free read writing

[Fiction] Midnight Baking

It is 11:37 in the dark of night. The hour of yeasting. Sian’s sprawled across her brand new reclining sofa, only just bought from Sofa Mart by way of a downright predatory loan because she wanted to own leather furniture for once in her goddamn life and had already decided to be buried with it. Stainmaster, they told her. Tough enough to withstand a pack of great danes or half a day with a rambunctious toddler.

But they didn’t say jack shit about evil fairies. She’s just finished part one of a two-parter for Criminal Minds and is eating hummus directly from the plastic container with a spoon because after your fourth twelve hour shift in a row while holiday music does an endless loop and summons forth the devil in the automotive aisle at Target, going to the grocery store sounds about as appealing as doing lines of ground glass off the floor of a truck stop bathroom.

Sian knows she’s fucked the minute she sees the sparkly puffs of flour out of the corner of her eye, and catches the smells the sweet scent of baking bread mixing unappetizingly with the acrid stench of scorching leather. “Oh, come on.”

Continue reading “[Fiction] Midnight Baking”
Categories
guest post

[Guest Post] Daniel Ausema on Steampunk

ladyjanshisacolyte-200
When I talk to some people, the word steampunk conjures images of comedies of error and high society members speaking loftily of their exploits and adventures, the latest in airships and steam-cars and gossip. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s certainly far from encompassing the full breadth of the genre.

Several years ago, on a guest blog on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog, Catherynne Valente had a post about steampunk, urging writers not to forget the punk part of the name. Punk, for her at least, meant a focus on those outside of power and a distinct distrust of authority.

I’m a generation too young to have any real identification with punk music, and I wasn’t into alternative music, its successor in many ways, when I was in high school, but her post definitely resonated with me. At the time I was already deep into the first draft of Spire City, Season One, and I saw that her points matched with what I was writing. Spire City focuses on a group of outcasts who have been infected by a mad scientist’s serum. To most of the city, and especially those in charge, that scientist isn’t seen as mad in the least, but a prominent member of society. So their story, by definition, must focus on the characters’ position outside of power.

When I think about it, this focus extends to other things I’ve written, as well. There was a time when what I wrote fit more clearly in the high fantasy category. Always on the margins of that, but more that than anything else. My focus was never on kings and queens, though, not on famous generals or powerful wizards or great knights. I wrote about commoners. Commoners who found themselves embroiled in the events of the realm, no doubt, who might come into some measure of power, but it’s always from an outsider perspective.

It feels, without trying to be melodramatic, like a valuable perspective, especially when so much of the online conversations I’ve had of late center on the same issues of power and privilege and the sense of injustice and anger.

So steampunk, to me, always at least has a foot in the underside of society. The soot-chugging factories no less than the gleaming brass boilers, the street urchins no less than the dashing sky pirates. And all the real-world tensions of privileged elites and overworked classes, often immigrant or colonized or both.

I absolutely despise any attempts to make grand statements of “this is steampunk and that isn’t” or anything of the sort. Often the best stories are found just beyond the edges of any sort of definitive border people try to create (around steampunk, around fantasy, around SF). This is not a manifesto calling everyone to write the same as I do. I do, though, believe strongly in the power of stories to help us see the world around us better. So whether I’m writing steampunk or something else entirely, it’s where I stake my place. Maybe others will come and pitch their literary tents nearby.

contagion-200

Spire City is home to mighty machines of steam power and clockwork, and giant beetles pull picturesque carriages over cobbled streets, but there is a darker secret behind these wonders. A deadly infection, created by a mad scientist, is spreading through the city, targeting the poor and powerless, turning them slowly into animals. A group of those infected by the serum join together to survive, to trick the wealthy out of their money, and to fight back.

A new episode of Spire City is published every three weeks by Musa Publishing. The episodes of Season One: Infected are collected in two bundles, Contagion and Epidemic. Season Two: Pursued began publication on November 28, 2014 with “Lady Janshi’s Acolyte.”

Daniel Ausema (@ausema) has a background in experiential education and journalism and is now a stay-at-home dad. His fiction and poetry have appeared and are forthcoming in many publications, including Daily Science Fiction, The Journal of Unlikely Stories, and Strange Horizons. He lives in Colorado, at the foot of the Rockies. (Amazon)

Categories
charity tom hiddleston writing

Lightspeed and UNICEF UK

Just in case you hadn’t heard yet: I HAVE A STORY IN LIGHTSPEED AW YEAH HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW

I’m in a TOC with NK Jemisin. I’m in a TOC with NK Jemisin. MY HEART CANNOT HANDLE THIS.

Anyway. Whew. Deep breaths. Yes. The Tell Me There Will Be No Pain is in December’s issue of Lightspeed, now available from many a fine purchasing establishment. If you want to wait (and you shouldn’t), it will be available online on 12/30. Trust me, I’ll say something on my blog when that happens.

Colonel Rathbone attends my final debriefing. I’m wearing a paper hospital gown that doesn’t cover my ass; I’ve got a breeze where no breeze has any right to be, from the back of my neck right down where the good Lord split me. But despite that I’m sweating, the backs of my thighs sticking to the paper covering the hospital table. The metal contacts set all around my head feel cold, sending little shocks that make my teeth itch…

Technically, this is actually a reprint, since the story was originally published in the special edition of Women Destroy Scifi that went to the Kickstarter backers. Not exactly a wide release, if a special one that had me super excited. So I’m really happy that this story will finally be widely available to read. It’s an important story to me, and probably the best one I’ve ever written thus far.

And also:

Screen Shot 2014-12-01 at 11.47.01 AM

$385 encompasses the original payment plus the reprint payment for being in the December issue. And you might recall what this means; it’s the same deal as two years ago with Comes the Huntsman. Story written as a birthday gift for Tom Hiddleston, funds get donated.

I hope you all run out and get this issue of Lightspeed right now. This story is incredibly important to me, for a lot of reasons. And I hope you’ll consider supporting UNICEF with me this month as well.

Categories
technology

iTunes did a weird thing

I added a bunch of new music to iTunes lately (not bought from the store) and a bunch of songs started doing this weird thing where somewhere between 90 and 30 seconds from the end, the song would just skip to the next. Which was super aggravating. I tried deleting the songs and reimporting, which was the common fix I found online, no deal. Skipping problem persisted.

What I finally got to work was going in to the iTunes folder and deleting the iTunes Library.itl file. Open iTunes back up and it thinks there’s no music at all; then you just have to reimport the iTunes Music Library.xml file using the “Add to Library.” I backed up the xml file right before I did this just in case, but using the one already in the folder brought back all my music and playlists just fine. (Also preserved all the play counts, etc.) It just took a while to reimport everything. But now all the songs are playing their full length.

Just figured I’d mention this here in case any of you ever run into this problem. It took a stupid amount of time reading through forum threads before I found the one person who mentioned this fix. So now it’s in two locations!