Oh, and that love story? It’s a gay love story.

The nice thing about her book is that it focuses on those elements, in that order. In fact, I wouldn’t even say the fact that the two main characters are both men is the third most important element she’s woven into this rich story. Class stratification, coming of age and realizing potential are all part of the journey of Jacob Dawes, a too-intelligent-for-his-station kid plucked from the slums of Earth to attend an exclusive academy for the Empire’s best and brightest. Sexuality is merely a detail.

It’s refreshing to read about a world where who someone chooses to love doesn’t matter, but rather focuses on why and how Jacob’s character comes to fall for Emperor himself.

And it’s the twists and turns, the imperfections and the messiness, of that relationship that’s the strength of the novel. Jacob and Pete are different people, but the magnetism binding them together forces those rough, jutting edges to rub against each other. It truly is a love story about a real relationship.

While Fighting Gravity is set in a sci-fi universe, it’s not about the tech or the fancy do-hickey that blasts plasma into antimatter. Rather, it provides a rich backdrop for the characters to populate. Her depictions of things new and wondrous to Jacob are appropriately breathtaking, but not once does this futuristic world get in the way of the flow of the story. The world of Fighting Gravity feels like a place that exists somewhere down the road, and Petersen is merely returning from a trip to a future, our future, and has chosen to tell us about it through this story of love.

Go devour Fighting Gravity from Dragon Moon Press

Leah is one of my favorite follows on Twitter, and you can find her blogging and knitting away at leahpetersen.com.

My post went up today, and I wrote about something light and airy – death! More specifically, why killing your primary characters, especially in a fantasy novel, is a good idea. Here’s an excerpt from Kill Your Darlings – Why Primary Characters Deserve to Die:

Death is a powerful tool to make that connection. Everyone has had an experience with a loved one or friend dying. And even if they haven’t, they’ve worried about it. There are countless, complex emotions attached to death. Fear, regret, longing, relief and anger are just some of the ripe areas to explore.

But it has to be a major character to have an impact. Think about your own life. How would you feel if a secondary character in your own life died? A distant cousin, or a friend you see three times a year? What about your father? Or your daughter?

I won’t give it all away here – go check it out! While you’re at it, browse around the other awesome posts and bookmark this page, so you can come back and read what hasn’t been posted yet.

Read Kill Your Darlings – Why Primary Characters Deserve to Die

Boundless worlds smash and
Weave. Unstitching disappears.
Void destination.

Get A Dance With Dragons

So where do you start? Luckily, there are a plethora of tools at your disposal to help you create a slick looking eBook. These are five of my favorites, and ones that I find myself turning to over and over again while I’m making eBooks for Midwestern Gothic.

Lynda.com
Lynda is a massive website with literally thousands of training videos. If you’re serious about learning how to make a professional eBook, and are willing to set aside ten or more hours learning the ins and outs, it’s well worth the $25 monthly subscription. Whether you’re using Word, InDesign or some other tool to create your eBook, or if you need help deciding which tool to use, start here. I find myself referring back to this material often – it’s amazingly deep and covers everything you can think of.

Sigil
If you’ve worked with HTML or CSS you’ll realize an eBook is a lot like a website once you start playing around with the guts of an ePub (that’s the universal eBook format). It’s made up of many files stitched together to form one cohesive user experience. There are a few tools out there that will unpack the ePub, and you could even do it by just unzipping the file itself and using an HTML editor. But I like Sigil, an ePub-focused tool that is a cinch to use and has all the deep, control intensive features you need.

Three Press
The online stores won’t take just any old ePub. It has to pass a series of quality checks that are universally accepted – think of it like emissions testing for autos. If your book doesn’t pass, it won’t even leave your garage. Instead of banging your head against the wall by getting your file rejected over and over by sellers, use Three Press’s validation tool. It’ll tell you if you pass or fail, and (more importantly) tell you why you failed.

ePub to .mobi
The kindle has created its own format (.mobi) for displaying eBooks on the Kindle, which makes the whole “ePub is the unversal format” argument a little problematic. Thankfully, this site will let you upload your ePub and convert it to a .mobi file, or vice versa.

EPUB Reader Firefox Extension
This is by far the simplest way I’ve found to test how my ePub looks and behaves. For more fine-tuning, you’ll definitely want to download the Kindle and iPad emulators out there to see how your ePub will look. But while you’re in the midst of working on it and you just want to see how a tiny change you just made looks, it’s as simple as dragging the file into your Firefox browser and seeing how it all shakes out.

Broken, on her knees
Surges up, down, back up again
Settles bittersweet

Get A Thirty-Something Girl

Fast-forward to a year later, and I think the journal has exceeded both our expectations. Every time we open submissions, I’m constantly surprised not just by the quantity of stories and poetry we get, but the quality. Every issue we have to make the tough decision of where to draw the line in the sand, and every time we leave excellent works on the cutting room floor.

The Winter 2012 (#4) Issue is our biggest, and I won’t risk the old cliché of trying to claim it’s our best. But now that we’ve got a full year under our belt, I think we have found something that only a handful of other literary journals have – an identity. Each story, character and setting feels uniquely Midwestern, yet still resonates outside the region.

Midwestern Gothic Stats:
4 Issues
121 Contributors
253,279 Words
84 Stories
42 Poems
413 Tweets

I can’t share all the details, but the next year has plenty to be excited about. I can’t say what exactly just yet – you’ll just have to take my word for it.

In the meantime, head over to the site, browse the photography, meet a few of our contributors and maybe pick up an issue or two.

It all came out of comparing an interesting study by HP where they analyzed a gargantuan amount of data on twitter to figure out who (they think) are the most influential users.

When I compared that with the BrandZ top 100 brands – the results weren’t surprising, but pretty telling. Only Google managed to crack both lists.

In the post I talk a bit about what this means for brands, and how they can do a better job being more influential.

Read the post here!

Deep Focus Series has a few others in the collection that are definitely worth checking out if you like the treatment of They Live.

Soul piercing look at
a movie with no soul. They
Live wins yet again.

Get They Live (Deep Focus)

If you don’t, this post is not for you. Right now over at leahpetersen.com there’s a little contest going on where you can enter to win books or hand-crafted knitted items – which is perfect because snowpocalypse is about to hit Chicago.

So if you’ve got a few head over there, follow her blog and twitter feed (because the best thing she has to give away for free are her online words)

I plan on checking out more from Brandon Sanderson. He’s done beyond a bang up job taking over a complex universe that was, quite honestly, getting stagnant and breathed new life into it.

Epic tale goes for
the throat. Never lets it go.
Glorious battle.

Get Towers of Midnight