Category Archives: Publishing

Nudging Angels – My Writing Life

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I posted this the other day on the Facebook. I know, I know, it’s Facebook. Fine. You’re right, ma’am. You’re right.

This is what it’s like for me being a writer.

Writing books is brutal work. It’s not brutal like coalmining. It’s brutal in a different way. Maybe something to do with re-organizing angels standing on the head of a pin. You can’t nudge them. You have to nudge them. Angels don’t exist. Yes, yes, Angel’s do exist. You have to walk three miles to get to the coffee shop where the pin is. You’re excited to nudge the angels. Until you sit down. Then you’re exhausted. And you have to walk the three miles home!

People tell you that you’re organizing the angels the wrong way. You tell them there’s no such thing as angels. They suggest a teacher, a book, a writing class, more yoga, less yoga, or stronger coffee. No one will suggest no coffee.

Then, you get the angels organized, and you take your spectral camera and take a picture. Most people ignore your picture. Some people love your picture. A few people give you a one-star review. “Less angels. More demons.” Or…”I liked it, except for the pin part. Maybe a sardine can next time.”

I then think, taking this into the first person, that I shouldn’t be trying organize angels on the head of a pin. I should do something else. I ignore the praise, the money, and the five-star reviews. This is too hard. I shouldn’t be doing this.

Then? I look at a picture of the angels I took a few months before. I don’t know how I was feeling at the time. I don’t remember how my back hurt, or how far the coffee shop was, or any of that. I simply look at my picture, of those angels, and I cry. Because I love it. You don’t have to love it. But I love it. And I was born to do this. I was born for the work, and the isolation, and the bullshit. Because book writing is mostly bullshit.

And that is what what it’s like to write books.

Kevin J. Anderson and a Bundle of Science Fiction Adventure!

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Kevin J. Anderson blogged about this amazing bundle of books and I’m re-posting it here about all the books! Click here for the bundle.

Science Fiction is the literature that always set my imagination on fire, sparking my sense of wonder, taking me on adventures into the future, off to the most distant parts of the universe, to alien cultures, and the frontiers of the human mind.

I’m curating a new Adventure SF bundle for storybundle.com that contains fourteen great books guaranteed to set your imagination on fire, and it launches today, June 22—for only a little more than a dollar a book.

If you like grand space opera, we’ve got DARKSHIP THIEVES by Sarah A. Hoyt, TIMEWEB by Brian Herbert, FIRE WITH FIRE by Charles A. Gannon, THE WORKER PRINCE by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and even TALES OF DUNE, the previously uncollected Dune short stories written by Brian Herbert and me.

For hard SF, there’s LAUNCH PAD, an anthology of science fiction stories edited by Jody Lynn Nye and Mike Brotherton. In traditional fast-paced science fiction, the bundle has HER BROTHER’S KEEPER by Mike Kupari, MORNING SONG by Dean Wesley Smith, and BURIED DEEP by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

In post-apocalyptic adventure, Aaron Michael Ritchey’s DANDELION IRON fits the bill. For gritty cyberpunk, Todd J. McCaffrey has CITY OF ANGELS. Alan Dean Foster has the undersea epic OSHENERTH. And THE CAULDRON by Jean Rabe and Gene deWeese offers mind-bending, thought-provoking future speculation.

I’m also very pleased to include 2113, a new anthology edited by me and John McFetridge—a collection of stories inspired by legendary rock band Rush (and it includes my sequel to the classic epic “2112”).

With storybundle.com, you name your own price for this grab bag of Adventure SF books. For as little as $8 you get the basic bundle of seven titles, and for as little as $16 you get them all. A portion of the money goes to charity—the Challenger Learning Center for Space Science Education—and, other than a small admin percentage, the rest of the earnings is directly divided among the titles.

For this Adventure SF bundle, I’m adding an exclusive sneak preview for all customers—a first-hand look at the first few chapters of NAVIGATORS OF DUNE (due out September 13), the grand finale of the Great Schools of Dune trilogy, as well as the first few chapters of ETERNITY’S MIND, the climax of my Saga of Shadows trilogy.

This is available for a limited time only, running for three weeks.  The bundle ends on July 12.  Shoot for the stars!

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“Down on Vengeance Creek”–The Story Behind the Story

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Ever since I first heard the word “steampunk” I had the idea to write a story where a man is turned into a steam-powered cyborg on a mission of vengeance. I wanted to set it in the Old West because, yeah, Hang ‘Em High with Clint Eastwood. Westerns are good for vengeance stories.

So it was inevitable that I would write the story, but I didn’t want to just write a typical steam-powered cyborg story. I mean, come on, how many do we need?

And think about that for a minute. Steam engines require heat hot enough to boil water. Putting one inside a human being is not a good idea. So yeah, this wasn’t going to be a happy story, and I wanted the voice, the characters, the whole thing to transcend what is normally done.

In essence, I didn’t want some white cowpoke going after bad guys, or even some British dandy. No, for this story, I wanted to go back to a paper I wrote in college, which was a long time ago.

In college, I studied slave narratives, and I wrote a paper mimicking the language the scholars used when transcribing their conversations with ex-slaves. So it’s like this. Back in the 1930’s, the former African-American slaves were dying, and scholars didn’t want their histories to be lost. So they went around and talked to the people and then wrote down what they said. Verbatim. Bad grammar and all.

That’s what I wanted to do with my Vengeance Creek story. I wanted it to be from the point of a view of a freed slave whose family was murdered. A brilliant blacksmith turns him into a cyborg to get revenge.

I knew I couldn’t go full-on slave narrative, or yeah, I might come across a wee bit racist, so I softened the language some. And I avoided using the ‘n’ word. Not my place to use that word. It’s funny, but some of the people who read it were worried that I shouldn’t be trying to write like a black man, but if that’s the case, do I only tell stories about middle-aged white guys in the suburbs? Kill me now.

No, I stuck to my guns. I submitted the story to Quincy J. Allen, who agreed to publish it in the fourth collection of Penny Dread Tales. Hurray! And I was given pole position, the first story baby, the alpha dog spot.

Funny, but Quincy thanked me for avoiding the use of the ‘n’ word. However, I talked with an African-American guy who said I should’ve used it, that it would have fit. But again, not my place. That is the true American curse word, and I don’t want to be a part of it. I did have to use it once in LONG LIVE THE SUICIDE KING, but man, I really tried not to.

At the big coming out party for The Penny Dread Tales Volume IV, we each read a part of our stories. I was soooo nervous to read mine because yeah, writing it was one thing, speaking it is an entire different thing all together. But I stepped up, and in my best black voice, I read the first few pages of the story. People were swept along. I was a big hit and no one was offended. Thank God. And now I am dying to read the whole thing! It’s such a fun shoot ‘em up and the ending is so righteous.

As a side note, I am loving this movement in the steampunk community toward more diverse stories from around the globe. The 19th century really was the start of globalization, and yeah, everyone has a story to tell.

And I have an idea for another multi-cultural steampunk story…this one in India, with a transgender spy working against the British empire. Oooooh, just typing those words gets me itching to start.

And yeah, that one I’ll send to Quincy as well. I am just loving his Penny Dread Tales anthologies. I’m in volume III and IV and I feel very fortunate.

You can find them online and all over the place electronically. If you want a physical copy, I have some. Just hit me up.

Thanks everyone!