That’s it. After 19 weeks and 106,000 words, the first draft of the Conquistador Dragon Novel is finished. Its working title is now “The Cannon and the Coin,” an epic fantasy about faith, globalization, and the Age of Exploration.
Sweeter than Lead
Ladies and gentlemen and everyone! Buckle up, and close your eyes, because my short story Sweeter than Lead has gone live in audio form on PodCastle, the original fantasy fiction podcast! (Text version now available also.)
Sweeter than Lead is a dark fantasy about succession, addiction, and malevolent prophecies. With worldbuilding so thick it will go back in time and drown you as a child.
Plenty of story notes on this one; worldbuilding this dense comes with extra layers, sources of inspiration, and so forth. Spoilers abound, of course, so stop right here until you’ve read or heard the story…
Almost there!
Tonight, the Untitled Conquistador Dragon Novel passed 100,000 words.
It’s long enough to be a proper novel. A big milestone, but not quite the end. It needs another 2.25 scenes, probably 5-10k more words.
Holy crap. I’ve been working on my first novel draft since mid-March, and it’s going to be finished by the middle of next week.
Story Sale: Sweeter than Lead
I am thrilled to announce another short story sale to one of my favorite markets! “Sweeter than Lead” will be appearing late this summer in PodCastle, the original fantasy fiction podcast!
It’ll be free online in audio (and text) when it goes live, so once again you’ll all be able to enjoy the story the moment it comes out! This one is a bit different from anything I’ve published so far: it’s a neo-Lovecraftian1 dark fantasy about seers, prophecies, and what it means to foresee possible futures. If some kind of worldbuilding-per-page competition existed, this tale would reach across timelines to strangle its competitors’ authors in their beds.
Because that’s just the kind of story it is.
Worldcon 74 Panel Schedule
I just received my panel schedule for Worldcon! I can’t wait for the chance to go up there and share my knowledge, and I hope to see lots of you there!
The Real Lab
Thursday Aug. 18, 18:00 – 19:00, room 2208 (Kansas City Convention Center)
Sometimes things go very right in the lab, and sometimes things go horribly wrong. Professional scientists discuss the sometimes terrifying, often hilarious, crazy things that can happen when working in the lab. How does science happen and is it really as clean cut and precise as we are led to believe? How has science organized itself so that error corrects solid knowledge out of the human stew?
Dr Helen Pennington, Dr. Ronald Taylor, MR. Donald Douglas Fratz, Benjamin C. Kinney, Sharon Joss (M)
Thinking Through Neuroscience in SF and Fantasy
Saturday Aug. 20, 16:00 – 17:00, room 2209 (Kansas City Convention Center)
Neuroscience is a complex and rapidly developing area of technological advancement. We look at some of the recent advances as well as discussing how these are reinterpreted in SF and Fantasy media.
S.B. Divya (M), Anna Kashina, Benjamin C. Kinney, Caroline M. Yoachim
I Don’t Believe In Science
Sunday Aug. 21, 13:00 – 14:00, room 2204 (Kansas City Convention Center)
All too often we hear about people who “Don’t Believe in Science,” but science isn’t about belief. A discussion about why talking about science in terms of belief does science, and faith, a disservice.
Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ2, Carl Fink, Benjamin C. Kinney, Dr. Heather Urbanski (M), Renée Sieber
June 2016 update
Heyyyy, it’s monthly update time! Everyone’s favorite time.
Maybe someone’s favorite time?
Either way, it’s been a good month! Chock-full of exclamation points:
- My story “The First Confirmed Case of Non-Corporeal Recursion: Patient Anita R.” came out in Strange Horizons! I’m super proud of this one!
- I sold two stories! “The Time Cookie Wars” to Flash Fiction Online, and “Shiplight” to Metaphorosis.
- I returned to the Fourth Street Fantasy convention. I got to speak on a panel! I learned tons of things (including 45 specific action items for my novel)! I got to talk to lots of amazing people!
- I revised 2 short stories, and drafted one new piece of flash!
- The novel is on track! Currently at 76,000 words, and I’m hoping to finish the first draft at the end of July, if it doesn’t end up running long.
Story Sale: Time Cookie Wars
Have you ever had one of those “Past Self, why did you mess this up for me?” moments? Of course you have. Past Self is a jerk.
Well, the time has come to get your vengeance on Past Self, because my story “The Time Cookie Wars”3 has sold to Flash Fiction Online!
Publication date not yet set, but I’ll certainly let you all know as soon as I have an estimate.
This week has been stuffed with writing success, between this acceptance, last week’s one, and a Revise & Resubmit offer from one of my favorite markets. I am here to rock your short fiction universe!
Story Sale: Shiplight
I’m thrilled to announce the sale of my story “Shiplight” to Metaphorosis, a magazine focused on beautifully written speculative fiction!
This is a story about humanity’s first extrasolar colony, and about generational divides. When a lucky few escape the bounds of Earth to settle on an uninhabited planet, what becomes of their children, who never knew the world that defines their parents?
Publication is planned for August or September, and I’ll let you all know when I have an exact date!
Non-Corporeal Recursion
My story “The First Confirmed Case of Non-Corporeal Recursion: Patient Anita R.” is up today on Strange Horizons!
(These author notes contain no spoilers for anything beyond the story’s first page.)
This piece doesn’t have a lot of secrets, no extensive authors’ notes. I might clarify that none of Anita’s science references are things I personally do; other than the choice of institution, her science life is not a window into mine. Well, except for the windowless basement lab. TRUE SUFFERINGS of a scientist’s life.
This story means a lot to me, but I don’t want to feed you an interpretation. Hopefully it touches you in some way that resonates with your own life. So rather than telling you what the story means to me, I can give a bit of its history:
I wrote this piece in fall of 2015, for the Codex 12th Annual Halloween Contest, where it took second place. The contest had a time limit and two rules: include something halloween-related (however vaguely or thematically), and use seeds given by fellow writers. I received the seed “the Halloween candy that you liked the least,” thus the role of candy corn4. I was more inspired by the chance to write something halloween-ish. When I began, I didn’t yet have a conflict or a plot, but I did have a character concept, one that had percolated in the back of my mind for a while:
In so many classic ghost stories, the spirit repeats and reenacts the moment of their death, again and again. I wondered: what – if anything – would that be like from the ghost’s point of view? And is there any way the ghost could move beyond that haunting state?
May 2016 Update
Hey! It’s another month! Where did it go?
- It went into 20k more words on my novel, bringing me slightly above my 50k target. Should I be done with Act 2 (of five) by now? This may go on longer than planned, but that’s fine, it’s epic fantasy. I’m aiming for 25k next month, since I have no more business trips and am done with:
- Rewriting and finishing a new short story that I loooove. It’s currently up for judging in an anonymized contest, so I can’t say anything about it yet.
- I got a revise & resubmit on one of my old stories! Would be nice to send this out; part of it feels like “me two years ago” but some parts I still really love. Will dig into rewrites next week.
- I’ve been working my way through Dr. Who; a few months ago I’d never seen a single episode of the modern series. But my wife has seen ’em, and I need to be in on the conversation! I usually don’t watch TV-type stuff (the life of a scientist+writer), but if I watch an episode on the exercise bike, it keeps me pedaling for 40 minutes! I’m now halfway into Season 5 (the first Matt Smith season); enjoying his new take on the doctor just fine, but the writing seems a lot sloppier.
- Got some neat convention-related news that I can’t share yet! I AM A TEASE.
I’m so excited for June. St. Louis may get hot, but there’s Fourth Street Fantasy on the 17th! My ghost story coming out on the 6th! So much awesome stuff to write! And less than 3 months until my wife returns from Mars!