Without Really Trying

Writing under a pen name

2012-04-13T23:57:55Z

Hey guys,

For a variety of reasons, I switched to writing under a pen name. In completely unrelated news, who IS this handsome devil?

Twitter Updates for 2011-04-21

2011-04-21T07:14:00Z

Check this video out — Harper's Hearth – UN Security Council http://t.co/IEu2Wm8 via @youtube #

WotF eBooks

2011-02-24T15:39:14Z

Couple of my friends released their WotF stories as eBooks on Smashwords. They’re keeping me in the loop, and if it works out, I might do the same.

Adam Colston “Not in the Flesh”

Steve Savile‘s also posted at least one eBook.

Sha’Daa: Last Call Book Trailer Released

2010-12-14T15:15:53Z

Just got word from Mike Hanson that the Book Trailer for the shared world anthology that I was invited to last year has been released to the nets. Without further ado, here it is:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a taste of the anthology:

SHA’DAA: LAST CALL, a new anthology published by Altered Dimensions Press (an imprint of Cyberwizard Productions). Once every ten thousand years the walls between dimensions weaken for a period of 48 hours. And thus every inconceivable horror and monster in existence is given the opportunity to break through to our world and wreak untold havoc and destruction. This is the time of The Sha’Daa, and it is nearing.

Ultimately, I’m proud of the story I wrote for this anthology. I’d just come back from WotF and Clarion West and was completely burnt out. Normally, I pride myself on being a low maintenance author, but because of the burn out and a confluence of other events, I’m not sure I was the easiest author to work with. Kudos to Ed McKeown for being so patient with me.

When I wrote the piece, I used a Shoggoth as one of the bad guys… turns out Dungeons and Dragons co-opted Shoggoths and turned them into Gelatinous Cubes… something I should have remembered from my adventuring days. Luckily, the “cube” is used in a unique way, so hopefully readers will think Lovecraft more than Gygax.

I can’t wait to see a few reviews of the anthology. My piece is so different in tone from what I read in the first Sha’Daa antho, I’m sure it’ll get a mention… whether it’s a good or bad one remains to be seen.

Found on the internet

2010-11-22T22:54:05Z

Found this through a Google Alert:

The contest publishes an anthology of the winners each year and after reading the last few years of anthologies I understood where I was going wrong. And for those readers that enjoy reading speculative fiction short stories, the anthology is a must read each year. I still get goosebumps when I reread Jordan Lapp’s After the Final Sunset, Again.

Goosebumps? Hell yes. Thanks Thomas!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows truly a movie for those who’ve read the book

2010-11-22T02:31:04Z

If you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, like me and my wife, the movie is a long two and a half hours of suck. Characters lurch around doing things for absolutely no reason, and generally being complete morons. They end up finding a magical sword that is literally at the bottom of a random, unmarked lake in the middle of nowhere that they just happen to stumble upon,

At one point Harry is zapped with a disguise that is the equivalent of covering half of his face with his hand and none of the bad guys seems to recognize him, despite the fact that he’s in the company of his two friends when they apprehend him.

There’s a long boring part in the middle where they’re just teleporting around the countryside for no reason, until they suddenly decide to go in search of the hawkcruxes, and hey, like all Potter movies there’s a great big Deux Ex Machina at the end. Without others solving Harry’s problems for him, he would long ago be a smear on the wall.

About the only good part of the movie was the mini-movie that described the creation of the Deathly Hallows. It was your standard Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tale, but animated with enough style that I was thoroughly entertained.

If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably enjoy this movie. Otherwise you’ll be totally clueless (as were we, in spite of seeing the other movies).

Kinect vs PS3 Move

2010-11-09T16:02:42Z

Returned the Kinect and bought a Playstation Move instead. There were several deal breakers with the kinect. First, the camera it uses in infra-red, and I have a south-facing house with single-pane windows. Whenever there was a significant temperature difference outside, I would “lose an arm” in the game. Brutal. Also, while i have a pretty big house, the “family” room, while reasonably sized, had an overstuffed sectional in it. The Kinect couldn’t seem to realize that this was not “walkable” so there were certain parts of the screen that I couldn’t reach. This is a big reason the Kinect is getting savaged online by apartment dwellers. Finally, of course, there was the lag.

The Move is much more responsive, but while the Kinect games were innovative (including an anti-gravity room), the game that came with the Move seemed like just a port of a Wii game (albeit it a much fancier and better responsive one). However, the advantage of the Move is that Sony can reverse-integrate it into their existing games, whereas the Kinect can’t (or certainly not easily). I’ll have to play around with the Move a little more (it works best with two controllers, but there was only one in the box and they were sold out of additional controllers), so I’ll keep you in the loop. As an added bonus, the PS3 plays Blurays, and is a much more powerful machine than the XBox.

If you have ideal, lab-like conditions, maybe the Kinect is for you (though I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve fully tested the Move). If you don’t the Move is your only option. Either of these leaves the Wii in the dust.

Time in a Bottle

2010-11-06T19:16:24Z

Time in a Bottle

I got a copy of the Time in a Bottle anthology edited by Paul Wittine, and published by Altered Dimensions Press, headed up by good friend Kelly Christiansen. I was flattered to be invited to submit a story, and even more flattered to find that I’d landed the coveted “Anchor” position. I’ve heard from a few editors that shoppers will often read the first story in an anthology and tell themselves they’ll buy if the second story is as strong as the first (and you want to wow them by having it be BETTER). Finally, this reluctant buyer will flip to the back of the book, thinking that if the first and last stories are good all the ones in between must be of the same caliber. Thus, your three strongest stories should appear 2nd, 1st, and last, in that order. Seeing as how the 2nd and 1st stories are written by K.C. Shaw and Jim C. Hines respectively I’m in some pretty august company!

As an added plus, the antho’s already been reviewed on Amazon, and my story got a mention. I had been worried about this piece appearing in a Time Travel anthology, because it’s written as a kind of rejection of the standard, poorly thought out time travel story, but Wittine saw the merit in the piece and took a risk on it. It had originally netted me a Semi-Finalist placing with Writers of the Future, so I’m glad to see that it’s a hit with readers.

Seven things to do after you’ve been published

2010-09-25T00:55:54Z

All right. You’ve just had your first story appear in Cherished Magazine’s hallowed (e)pages. What do you do next? Well, if you’re a novice writer, you should promoted the hell out of it. Remember, the more people read your work, the better chance there is that someone influential will, if not “discover” you, at least remember your name, or better yet, give you a favorable review.

Part of a publisher’s job is making sure that your work gets read, but there are some things you can do as the author to help them do just that.

Post a note to Facebook–This one is a no-brainer. Your family and friends should be among the first to help celebrate your success.
Post a “Brag” in your local writing forum. Almost every writing forum has a “brag” section specifically designed to brag about your latest sale (and often a Shameless Self-Promotion forum for when your piece goes live). EDF has one. Use it!
Write about it on your blog, or update your bio on your website. Don’t have a web presence? You should. How else are you going to get fan mail (it happens even to us novices)? More importantly, people know how to get a hold of you for interviews. When the computer Shaun Farrell from Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing uses to edit his interviews ate the one he did with the 1st place winners of WotF 25, he had to reschedule. Unfortunately, he could only contact me and Matt Rotundo, because the others didn’t have a web presence.
Stumble it! There are a bunch of social networking tools you can use to help make sure your story gets read. StumbleUpon is a great one if you write flash fiction. Digg is great if you’ve written something the technical set might like, and there are certainly others. EDF gets a huge percentage of its traffic from StumbleUpon. We had a story read nearly a million times by their users. Can you imagine your work getting in front of a million users?
Set up a “Google Alert” for your story name, your name, and common mis-spellings of your name. This will tell you when reviews start to show up (good Lord, don’t respond to them, especially the negative ones). When the reviews do show up, brag about those too. Remember, you’re not just an author, you’re a publicist, and people will expect a little self-promotion from you as long as you don’t get in their face about it.
Offer yourself for interviews. This one is a little dicey for newer writers. If you’re on a first name basis with a magazine editor AND your the publication is especially prestigious, it’s considered okay to send them a note alerting them of your success, and letting them know you’d be cool with answering a few questions from their readers. Often, editors are short of non-fiction, and your interview might fill a few pages.
Write another story! This is the beginning, not the ending. Keep pumping out those gems!

Is a starred review from Publishers Weekly ever old news?

2010-09-25T00:30:39Z

Writers of the Future XXV got a starred review from Publishers Weekly a while back, and I’d always intended to save it here for posterity, but by the time I got back to it, it had scrolled off the net.

I ended up finding it again after a couple of minutes Googling, and I thought I’d preserve it here in case it gets taken down again.

Bryerman, um, has a kind work or two to say about my piece:

L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: Volume XXV
Edited by K.D. Wentworth. Galaxy, $7.99 (540p) ISBN 9781592124367

Previous recipient of the award, K.D. Wentworth (The Course of Empire, Stars Over Stars) returns to edit this top-notch anthology of this year’s winners in the contest’s 25th year. The collection offers a dozen strong stories that range from well-conceived fantasy to classic science fiction reworked. Standout stories include Donald Mead’s touching “The Shadow Man,” with its lingering postwar ghosts in Hiroshima; Matthew S. Rotundo’s exploration of the ethical boundaries of military intelligence in “Gone Black”; and Jordan Lapp’s portrayal of the short, fiery life of a phoenix in “After the Final Sunset, Again.” Other featured writers such as Emery Huang, Fiona Lehn, and Mike Wood depict the rise of mega-corporations with paramilitary patent enforcers, for example; or competition for government financing turned into a dangerous sporting event; and computerized risk management taken to dangerous extremes. Each of the 12 stories is paired with the work of one of the winning illustrators from L. Ron Hubbard’s companion contest. Several essays round out this volume, complimented by noted author and perennial judge Robert Silverberg’s piece on the history of the contest. Always a glimpse of tomorrow’s stars, this year’s anthology is definitely a must-have for the genre reader. (Nov.)

Cevin Bryerman
Associate Publisher
Publishers Weekly