Tag: ebook

The Same Story Told: Excerpt

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TSST-c-9So I haven’t actually announced this on the blog, but I will be publishing The Same Story Told, a novel(!), in just a couple weeks! The Same Story Told is a post-apocalyptic pastoral fantasy told six times in a row. After a gale of sappers has devastated the world, a group of five friends attempts to rebuild a farming town. When their stores of food are raided, the Whistler of the group must place some of them in a magically induced deep sleep to conserve resources, alternating in year-long shifts. Each member of the group experiences unique fragments of the same struggle to create a sustainable source of food, deviating, echoing, altering format and style. You can read a bit more about it and preorder it on Smashwords or Amazon.

The book is divided into five sections, one for each of the characters, and a sixth section for the apocryphal legend that has risen about “The Lost Expedition.” This sixth section is actually the first in the book, so to give you a look inside the book I’m posting it here in full:

The Lost Expedition

In the year 1,240, the same year that yits lit all the streets of Opasis, the same year the harvests overfilled the storehouses of Nesten, in the year 1,240 Bellengrew gripped the Seedlings with a rigid claw, then fell, and cracked, and desolated the world. The infectious sappers that had brought prosperity and advancement to the other city-states, Bellengrew used to raise enormous fanged animates and roll bombs five feet in diameter. The incantation for infectious sappers, a guarded secret entrusted only to the most sage scholars, the most loyal civil whistlers, was passed around loosely between the power-hungry commanders and captains of Bellengrew, until finally a spark caught within that overstuffed tinderbox, and burned across all the Breath.Read More »

New Publication: Yellowknife

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“Yellowknife” is now available at Amazon and Smashwords! (And because I’m participating in Smashwords’s Authors Give Back sale, for the next couple days you can get it free from Smashwords!) For anyone who’s read my story “The Wisdom Goddess Star,” this novelette is set in the same world, though with a different group of characters.

yellowknife-c-1Inspector Naval is not that sort of inspector. He examines safety code violations, claims of mismanaged funds, workplace accidents. He is not a private eye, he is not a detective, he is not a genius of deductive reasoning. But Mars has scarcely any law enforcement, so when Margaret Hoehn turns up dead at an International Martian Program facility, Inspector Naval is the best the IMP can send.

Margaret Hoehn died at Yellowknife, an isolated research base mainly dedicated to studying the extraterrestrial bacteria found there. It was in the room containing this very bacteria that Hoehn was found dead from CO2 poisoning. In such a small facility, with constant surveillance footage ruling out most suspects, there’s a narrow pool of people who could’ve killed her—or maybe it was suicide, or just an accident. Regardless, Naval is still out of his depth, and he’ll have to adjust to the peculiar rhythms of life at the small, insular colony if he’s ever going to find out what really happened.

In addition to the novelette, this publication also includes an afterword by the author about how a mystery fiction class and research on Antarctica influenced the writing of the story.

New Publication: Red, Her Hand

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Wow it’s been a while since one of these, but here we go, “Red, Her Hand” is now available at Amazon and Smashwords! (And because I’m participating in Smashwords’s Authors Give Back sale, you can currently get it free from Smashwords!)

RHH-c-1“Now the real power isn’t predicting the future. The real power is predicting the prophecy.”

Gailee is a poor girl living in the Predestined Empire, where prophecies, written centuries ago by cloistered prophets, dictate all law and governance. Gailee provides for her family by working as a transcriber in one of the courts that interprets these prophecies, and as a straw dealer to noble kids. Tuuqoi, one of her buyers, is a young noble fated to become a prophet soon, whose most daring transgression in life is steaming straw with Gailee. His life takes a turn for the roguish when Gailee, overcome by a sense of calling, enlists his help to fulfill her destiny and become a prophet herself.

In addition to this novelette, this publication also includes an afterword by the author about the inspirations that mixed together to make this story.

New Publication: ChannelCon ’30

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Right on time for convention season, my new novelette “ChannelCon ’30” is now available on Amazon and Smashwords!

0016d89f1aa203ded0e47304488df88d16e3c368With hours and hours of old movies entering the public domain every year, in the near future curators emerge as a new kind of content creator, culling all this old material and selecting personal favorites to livestream on their channels. Lindsey Xong and Amber Smith are two such curators, Amber focusing on finding movies, and Lindsey focusing on commentary and abridgment. Together, the two form Amber Linz, an incredibly popular channel, poised to sign a major deal to to get exclusive access to old movies a year before they enter public domain. To announce this deal and to engage with the curator community, the two go to ChannelCon, the biggest, greatest curator convention in the world.

But almost instantly, it’s clear that ChannelCon is coming apart at the seams, beset by the growing division between purists (who stream content completely unedited) and cureditors (who stream abridged or even completely remixed movies.) As retaliations and acts of sabotage escalate, the two sides seek to claim either Amber or Lindsey as their own, driving a wedge between the duo and jeopardizing their deal. Finding out which side is perpetrating all the chaos is not only important for purists and cureditors—it could also be the only way to save the Amber Linz deal, and Amber Linz itself.

In addition to this novelette, this publication includes an afterword in which I discuss the real world inspiration for this story, and how little fandom and conventions have changed in the past 80 years.

New Publication: Tallahassee Ca. 2045

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Remember this post about the Parkland shooting and representation of high schoolers? The play I was talking about back then is now available, on Smashwords and Amazon.

Tc2045-c-2In the year 2045, a group of politically conscious high school seniors decides to organize a youth rally—a protest to lower the minimum voting age. Just before the protest is scheduled to happen, a massive ice sheet breaks off of Antarctica, causing global flooding. The youth rally becomes a demand for radical change of climate policy, and the politics of the students are put under new pressure. Relationships between the original group of friends strain as the protest grows further and further out of control, and any hopes of changing the world look dimmer and dimmer.

Tallahassee Circa 2045 is an exploration of protest culture, shifting ideologies, and the intersection of youth and politics, set against the backdrop of global catastrophe and an ever-shifting national landscape.

Running time is approximately 120 minutes. The cast is 1M, 5F, 3NB.

In addition to the play, this publication includes an afterword (a large part of which already appeared on this blog in that MSD post) which constitutes an in-depth look at youth rights, representations of high schoolers, and the politically tumultuous period in which the play was written.

Happy summer everyone! #HotOutHere

New Publication: The Wisdom-Goddess Star

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Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! My novelette, “The Wisdom-Goddess Star,” is now available on Smashwords and Amazon. It has nothing to do with love or romance, but neither does St. Valentine (possibly), so it works out. Here’s the synopsis:

twgs-c-2Alexander Irving. First generation Martian, born to Patricia Irving and Peter Leung. Studied journalism at the newly founded University of Mars, a petri dish for “human journalism,” a new style of journalism to compete with AI reporters. Moved to Phobos upon graduation and joined the staff of The Light, the premier news organization of Mars’s largest satellite. Reported primarily on the working class of Phobos—technicians, repair crew, service workers—and always felt he was missing something. The grit of real journalism, investigative journalism, the kind which humans still do in the mud and shadows of Earth.

2 Pallas. Third most massive asteroid in the solar system, the newest acquisition of the International Martian Program. Its colonization is the first major IMP project to make use of the Per Aspera Ad Astra program, recruiting a thousand new members from working class, low income, secondary education backgrounds. Due to its highly eccentric orbit, Pallas only nears Mars once every 2 years—making it the most isolated colony in the IMP.

Pallas gives Irving the opportunity he’s looking for, to probe deep into a colony from which AI cannot harvest data, as the colony still lacks a long-range communications relay. When Irving arrives, he shortly discovers that Pallas’s isolation may be the intentional work of the local governor, and he endeavors to discover what exactly the governor wants to keep hidden from the rest of the IMP.

In addition, the publication includes an afterword in which I discuss how a school superintendent election, a dysfunctional novella, and a few English classes influenced the creation of this story.