Emily Mah

Audio interview with Stephanie Burgis is up on Black Gate

2013-06-06T00:55:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know I've been away from this blog for over a month. Not the new normal, I promise. The insanity that kept me away has blown over now.

And I have a new interview up with Stephanie Burgis on Black Gate. Those of you who know me, know that Stephanie and I go way back. To 2001, specifically, when we went to Clarion West together. Since then she's moved to the UK; married our classmate, Patrick Samphire; had a child; published the Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson trilogy with Atheneum in the US and Templar in the UK; and been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

It was great to have an excuse to sit and talk to Stephanie. Afterwards I shut off the recording equipment and we kept right on talking. She's got another baby due soon, and her latest novel has just been sent out to publishers by her agent.

Go listen to the interview to find out more about one of my favorite writers, who also happens to be a friend.

It's a giveaway to celebrate the release of STOLEN MAGIC by Stephanie Burgis!

2013-04-09T15:17:00.000+01:00

To celebrate the release of Stolen Magic by the wonderfully talented Stephanie Burgis, she is holding a giveaway of one witch's heart ring, which I designed for the book! To enter, go to her post with pictures of the ring and an outline of the rules, here.

And I highly recommend this series. These were some of the most fun, heartwarming books I've read in a long time.

My latest short story, Disciple, is up on Black Gate

2013-04-08T22:21:00.000+01:00

I know it's been a while since I've posted. My indie writing career is still going full throttle, but my real excuses are my two adorable kiddos, who I have the privilege of playing with during the day. So, I'm a bit late posting this link to my short story, Disciple, that is now up on Black Gate.

This is the story of Dina, a barkeeper with a deep dark secret that involves unlicensed magic, an overthrown monarch, and the deaths of thousands. I've actually got other unpublished stories set in the Disciple universe. We'll see if they ever make it into print.

Tangent Online calls the story a "wonderfully complicated tale" and "a pleasure to read." They "strongly recommend" it.

This story dates back to my days in the Critical Mass writer's group and was one of the first short stories - as in a work of this length that actually told a story - I managed to write. A lot of late nights and tears went into this one. I sold it to Black Gate before I became one of their bloggers (though really, that makes little difference to their editor, when he picks stories to buy).

And with the publication of this story, I enter, for the first time since I sold my short story, a time when I have no more sold but unpublished short stories. I'll need to get hopping on the next one. Part of the reason for this is that as I've sold to bigger and bigger markets, the lag time between sale and publication has decreased. Part of the reason is also that indie writing thing I do.

Head on over to Black Gate to check out Disciple!

My interview of Ellen Datlow on Black Gate

2013-03-16T22:51:00.002Z

Talk about a gorgeous cover. Check out Queen Victoria's Book of Spells, edited by Ellen Datlow. Actually, before you run off and buy that (or after, yeah you can go ahead because my associates code is in that link, just make sure to come back), go listen to my interview of Ellen on Black Gate.

As you'll probably be able to tell from the tenor of our exchange, Ellen and I have known each other for a long time, because my life is that cool. We met at Clarion West when I was a student in 2001 and she our Editor in Residence fifth week. She told me to keep at my writing and that I had promise, and has still never bought one of my stories, which really is okay by me. She selects the cream of the crop, so it may be a decade or two before I'm in the running.

Real quotes from the interview include Ellen saying, "Oh I hate that," to one of my questions. How often do you hear that from Ellen? She doesn't even say that in her rejection letters! As always, it was very cool to have an excuse to talk to her, and you should definitely go hear what she has to say.

My Interview of Howard and Sandra Tayler on Black Gate

2013-02-25T23:16:00.002Z

Today's blogpost is over on Black Gate, and is my audio interview of Howard and Sandra Tayler, who are best known for Howard's web comic, Schlock Mercenary. I got to talk to them from my apartment in London via Google Hangout, and this was actually the first time I got to meet Howard.

In the interview, we discuss Howard's reward for the Acts of Whimsy fundraiser to support Jay Lake's cancer treatment. When the donations reached $37,000.00, Howard agreed to draw a cartoon of Jay Lake kicking cancer's ass. Here's the time laps video.

Now head on over to listen to the interview on Black Gate!

The Indie Experiment: One Year Later

2013-02-11T14:54:00.000Z

People have been asking me how the indie publishing of my E.M. Tippetts novels is going, so I thought I'd do a look back on my first year in the business. The hard numbers: I sold roughly 13,000 copies of my top selling book, Someone Else's Fairytale, released one new book, Castles on the Sand, and sold somewhere around 17,500 units of everything (I'm guessing on that one). I gave away 13,000 copies of Someone Else's Fairytale during one free day last March and 4,000 copies of Castles on the Sand over five free days in September. My biggest sales months were March through July and December. My worst months were January and November. I made just over $17,000.00 in royalties. All in all, not a bad start for a stay at home mom working out of a one bedroom apartment in London with two small children running around screaming.

So how's this year looking? Well, if my sales are seasonal, this year's looking fantastic. Last January I sold 138 books. This January I sold 1,455. However, if sales aren't seasonal, than that 1,455 is down from the high 2,000's that I was selling last summer. I also released one new book this year, Nobody's Damsel, the sequel to Fairytale, and have another one set to go in the next few months. So I have more inventory, four novels instead of the two I started with last year. On the other hand, last year this time I had most of my work priced at $.99. This year I've got all the novels at $2.99, which given the Amazon royalties system, means I make six times the revenue per sale, so my sales can go down some and I'll still make more money. I would like my sales to go up, though (obviously), not just because it earns me more money, but because I want to be able to move copies at this price point, rather than having to be in permanent fire sale mode. It remains very hard to predict future sales. In November, for example, I sold a couple hundred books, then in December I sold over 3,000 and Fairytale hit 51st in the Amazon Kindle store.

Those numbers, incidentally, do not include copies of the German edition of Fairytale, titled Nicht mein Märchen. All royalties for that book currently go to the translator, Michael Drecker, until he earns out his translation fee. That book has sold 1,805 copies since its debut last September and has stayed nice and high in the rankings on Amazon.de, so I'm very happy with how that experiment turned out. Right now Nicht mein Märchen outsells Fairytale and outsells Damsel. I'm developing a sincere love for German readers.

Altogether, my new business is off to a good start. I've sold more copies of Fairytale than there are people in my home town, so at least a few of those copies have sold elsewhere. I still have nightmares that my sales will just disappear overnight and people will decide they hate me and I'll never sell another piece of writing for as long as I live. My husband seems to find this overdramatic; I can't imagine why.

To look at it from a different perspective, I made a lot more from writing than I made from jewelry, and even made about as much as I did when I was still practicing law part time. I've reinvested a lot of that money into various kinds of ads, cover design for my newest releases, and now two blog tours, the first of which kicks off at the end of next month. I was also able to get a new computer that doesn't crash every five minutes and pay my copyeditor (aka Mom). While some might think it's nice to have a family member who catches more typos than any professional copyeditor I've known, it makes payment hard. She won't take money, so I buy her things like an iPad and an iPad mini. My take home earnings are very modest, but it's a positive number, which I wouldn't have guessed possible for the first year. I've determined which ads were successful and which aren't worth investing in again, so I'll save a little money that way this year.

My additional goal for this year is to work on more local publicity, both local to my geographical area and local to my ethnic/cultural niche. First I need to know where my local geographic area will be. Irrespective of that, though, I'll get in touch with more New Mexico newspapers, magazines, and independent bookstores, and I'll look into distribution options in the LDS market. I've held back from getting my books sold via LDS bookstores and won't explore that further until I secure a reversion of my rights to Time and Eternity, which should happen this June or July. I figure I should lay low while selling quadruple the copies I sold with my traditional publisher in that market, should said traditional publisher decide it wants to release an ebook of Time and Eternity and thus argue the book is still in print. I'm hoping to avoid any more wrangles with them!

Enter to win a copy of Stolen Magic, by Stephanie Burgis

2013-01-30T23:55:00.000Z

I got to read an advance copy of Stolen Magic. Here's my review of it:

The only bad thing I can say about this book is that it's the end of the series, and I didn't want to say goodbye to these characters. While Burgis leaves plenty of story threads that could be picked up again in future books, this book has a satisfying end that resolves the main conflict in Kat's life, specifically, who her mother was and what kind of scandalous magicks did she practice?

The story opens with Kat and family arriving for Angeline's wedding, and her betrothed's family hasn't exactly welcomed her into the fold. She's too poor, both in terms of money and social connections, and her future mother-in-law is not about to hand over the keys to the castle. Meanwhile, one of the other wedding guests is a woman who knows Kat's father very well, which is odd, because Kat's never heard a single thing about her. Yet a little bit of spying soon reveals that this woman practices magick, and not the proper, Guardian kind.

And Kat would love to ponder this further, only someone keeps trying to take Angeline's life, really, that's quite distracting for our heroine. Who, though, is at fault? The reluctant soon to be in-laws? The mysterious witch wedding guest? The jealous cousin who'd once hoped to wed Angeline's fiancee? Only Kat knows enough about magick and mayhem to get to the bottom of this.

In case it isn't obvious, I loved this book. Now there's a giveaway on Goodreads for a copy of the book. Really, you want to enter it. You want to win it. I'd enter myself, but that's selfish since I already have preordered my copy and copies for my mother and friend.

My interview with Kiini Ibura Salaam on Black Gate

2013-01-28T21:27:00.001Z

My post today is about my interview with Kiini Ibura Salaam on Black Gate. Kiini and I were classmates at Clarion West, and I could try to express how awesome she is, but I'll let her do that with one of her promotional videos for her book, Ancient, Ancient. She recently earned out her advance on this book, which is really saying something, because not only is it a short story collection - and those can be very hard to sell - it's her first full length book that is all her writing (she previously did a collaborative novel with several other writers and has been featured in many anthologies.) She is also the creator of KIS List, an email list of her thoughts and advice on writing and building an artistic career, and a selection of these posts has been compiled into her nonfiction book: On the Psychology of Writing: Notes from the Trenches, which I highly recommend. I have a copy, and remember several of the posts from when I first read them on KIS List.

Head on over to my interview of her on Black Gate to hear more. The interview is about 45 minutes long, and finishes with us talking about Under the Needle's Eye, the Clarion West 2001 anthology, which we'll soon be releasing in other, non-Kindle formats.

Sequence a Science Fiction Writer - a fund drive for Jay Lake

2013-01-11T11:43:00.001Z

As I type this, the fund drive for Jay Lake's cancer treatment has already exceeded it's initial goal of $20,000.00. Why do I bother to post then? Because that was the bare minimum needed to get Jay's tumor genetically sequenced. This will enable doctors to better target this next round of chemotherapy in one last desperate bid to kill the cancer and save Jay. It's still worth donating because Jay will have a lot of expenses over and above this as he continues his battle with cancer.

Unfortunately, the prognosis isn't good, at all. He's got an 8% chance of survival, and while this treatment might increase the odds, it is still experimental. So money towards this treatment, even if it doesn't save Jay, will further our understanding of cancer treatment and thus improve it in the future.

I don't remember the first time I met Jay Lake. He and I crossed paths at cons many times, though I do remember the year that he announced he'd go for the Campbell Award - which is the award for the best new science fiction author. You are only eligible for this award in the two years after your first professional sale, so it's a tough one to get. Jay's strategy was to write short stories by the truckload and submit them everywhere. At the beginning of this endeavor, I confess I overheard a lot of nay-sayers talking about how absurd this was and that he was clogging up the major markets' slush piles with his endless verbiage. By the time awards season rolled around, "Anyone thinking above their brain stem," as Daniel Abraham put it, would vote for Jay Lake. His intensive writing had gone to plan exactly, and he did win the Campbell Award. He and Frank Wu commemorated the event (Frank also won a Hugo that year) by flipping their long hair.

Right now Jay's got a tattoo on his scalp that says, "If you can read this, I've got cancer again" (or something to this effect). Unfortunately, it's easy to read the text, and his signature beard is gone too. Some filmmakers are making a documentary about a year in Jay's life, and the Kickstarter campaign for this is also funded in full.

The video, however, gives you a little glimpse into Jay's life. Please help support Jay by donating a few dollars to the fundraiser to cover his cancer treatment. He's got a fourteen year old daughter to raise and more books to write. Nobody's read for this to be the end of his time here with us.

My interview with Ian Tregillis, on Black Gate

2013-01-08T21:36:00.003Z

Today's post is actually a link to an interview of Ian Tregillis I posted last week on Black Gate, one that I am writing this corresponding post for now, after the fun disruption that was Ellen Datlow's Kickstarter campaign - which got funded in full, by the way!

I interviewed Ian when I was home in New Mexico this last summer, and it was one crazy interview because we kept cracking each other up and making jokes that were rather out there. He and I have spent WAY too much time alone on long car rides and hence have taken already lame jokes and dragged them out past the outer limits of absurdity.

So I did a lot of editing on this interview so that it's exclusively about our time together in Critical Mass, a writer's group of pros in northern New Mexico, and Ian's Milkweed Triptych, which is on of the most awesome novel series there is. And no, that's not a lame joke made absurd. I'm being honest there.

Head on over and listen to Ian and I crack each other up (and maybe you'll find us funny too), and then head over to the nearest bookstore or book website and buy Ian's books! Also, here is Ian's website.

Another plug for Ellen Datlow's Kickstarter campaign: a mini-interview on Black Gate

2013-01-03T18:17:00.000Z

Ellen Datlow's Kickstarter Campaign is still underway, and to hear from Ellen herself about the project and the rewards, head on over to her interview on Black Gate.

New short story up, and FREE for 5 days

2012-12-24T00:40:00.001Z

The reprint of Across the Sea, my story which was included in the Aurora Award winning anthology, The Dragon and the Stars, is now free on Amazon for the next five days. Do go download it! This story also received an honorable mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction.

Here's the description:

When documenting a people's legacy, which matters most: facts or lore?

Kate Hu is one of the last of the Tlingowa, a tribe that has all but assimilated into the American mainstream. She knows a handful of words from the now dead language, though she did get to grow up with one of the last fluent speakers, her aged and demented Aunt Bess. Once, in a moment of clarity, or perhaps it was deep insanity, Aunt Bess told her a story of three foreign men who lived among the Tlingowa after their ship wrecked off the coast. They had black hair, sallow skin, and tilted eyes, and they sang rather than spoke to each other. It's a story Kate will always treasure as her aunt only told it once.

Unfortunately a linguistic anthropologist was present at the recitation and decided to write a paper, mocking and deriding Aunt Bess's story as the academic explained the underlying language shift happening to the Tlingowa people. One paper was bad enough, but when adapted into a longer textbook, it hit the New York Times Bestseller List. Now the entire world knows and mocks Aunt Bess and that one treasured piece of Tlingowa lore.

When archaeologists turn up Chinese artifacts on Tlingowa ancestral lands, Kate is one of the first people on the scene, but so is that academic who ridiculed her family all those years ago. He's contemplating a sequel to his bestseller. Kate has no academic standing, nor any of this man's fame or fanbase. Will she have to stand by and watch him destroy everything she loves once again?

People who know me will note the linguistic anthropological geekiness, a side effect of my having a linguistic anthropologist best friend :-)

Fearful Symmetries, an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow, now on Kickstarter

2012-12-21T22:06:00.003Z

I just backed Ellen Datlow and Chizine's Kickstarter campaign for Fearful Symmetries, which will be an unthemed horror anthology edited by Ellen. The pitch video is not to be missed, and I include it at the end of this post.

Ellen Datlow was my fifth week instructor at Clarion West, a pressure cooker style workshop that takes roughly seventeen students a year. Mine was the class of 2001, and there are always five author instructors and one editor, and the editor's week is when everyone falls all over themselves to look good in the hopes of selling a piece. Ellen was editing SciFiction back then, one of the highest paying markets in the field. Every instructor spends each morning critiquing the students' work, and Ellen's critiques were blunt and to the point. I certainly didn't have anything sale-worthy, and if I'd doubted that, she set me straight.

But it was never personal. Business is business, and after critiques were done, she'd come hang out with us in our lounge on the top floor of a Seattle University dorm and often stay through dinner. One night she made us all egg creams (she's a New Yorker, after all) and that same evening, someone also broke out a giant Costco jar of Jelly Bellies. I helped Ellen pick through them to find the black licorice ones. She's one of those people who likes black licorice (and I was happy to give her all mine).

Ellen told me both that my writing needed work, but I should go ahead and invest in myself, and in the years since has sent me many short, blunt rejection letters, which for anyone not in the know, are a true kindness. Editors receive reams and reams of submissions, so any editor who takes the time to be personal is telling you that you were worth precious minutes of their time. Through brief notes and the occasional meetup at a convention, Ellen's been a continuous, honest presence in my writing life, and no, I've never managed to sell her anything. Nevertheless, she's always remembered me and has even recalled stories that I subbed years ago. It's been an honor to know Ellen Datlow; she's a big name who knows how to make use of small moments to remain a friend of mine for over a decade.

Now check out her pitch video!

Interview with Christy Marx up on Black Gate

2012-12-20T23:59:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of talking to Christy Marx on Skype for an evening (which was around noon her time, as we are 8 time zones apart). We talked about her career, which means we basically talked about the history of video game design and development, women in comics, and animation script writing. She's done all of these, and is rightly considered one of the most influential women in all three media.

These days she is writing the Amethyst comic and working for Zynga. She may not be a household name, but that isn't because you've never heard of her work. Unless you're under the age of ten or were in a coma for a few decades, you've played one of her games, watched one of her shows, or read one of her comics.

She even created Jem and the Holograms. Remember them? Head on over to listen to the entire 40 minute interview on Black Gate!

My Next Big Thing

2012-12-18T21:09:00.002Z

T.E. Shepherd, the author of The End of All Worlds, invited me to participate in this blog hop opportunity. Below are questions about my latest project; follow the link above to learn about Shepherd's (or as I call him, Thomas)!

What is the working title of your book?

The next thing I'll release under this name, actually, is a short story called Across the Sea, which was originally included in the Aurora Award winning anthology, The Dragon and the Stars.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The theme of the anthology was stories from the Chinese diaspora, so I wanted to write something to do with my Chinese heritage. The thing is, I grew up in New Mexico and was also very affected by the culture there (though cultured New Mexicans might feel otherwise.) I'd also recently had a conversation with my linguistic anthropologist friend about Athabaskan languages and how the originated in Asia, and so these three things together formed the seed of the idea.

I made my main character half-Chinese, like me, but she is also a registered member of a native, Athabaskan Tlingowa tribe (a fictitious tribe set in Oregon, that has some superficial similarities to the Tollowa and Tlingit peoples). And I think all my conversations with my friend had gotten under my skin, because I ended up writing about an academic dispute over a paper written about language shift and the creation of creoles that became a bestselling book. The problem my main character has with this book is that it mocks her not deceased aunt, who was one of the last people fluent in Tlingowa.

Aunt Bess told a fantastical story about survivors of a Chinese junk that wrecked just off the coast. The details are so out there, that the researcher who recorded it assumed it was just her dementia talking, but my main character wants, more than anything, to believe that it might be true.

What genre does your book fall under?

Mythic science fiction or science fantasy. It's got science fiction elements, but isn't bound by the actual laws of science.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

About three months or so. Short stories are hard because they're so short. A colleague of mine referred to the process of writing them as, "like trying to stuff a cat into a Coke bottle without breaking bones," and I think that's very apt.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Good question! I suppose the most famous work of mythic science fiction is The Martian Chronicles, but aside from mixing science fiction and mythos, there the similarities end. While I doubt I'm creative enough to have gone in a totally new direction, nothing immediately springs to mind.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

My linguistic anthropologist friend, the native cultures of New Mexico, and the prompt from the editors of The Dragon and the Stars.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

It's got a few twists I haven't discussed here. A lot happens in a short span of pages. I plan to get Across the Sea out just before Christmas!

Link to an Interview with Raymund Eich

2012-12-05T22:45:00.003Z

I know I'm really behind on my blogging. It's my indie career and this weird thing that's going on, people buying my books. I'm still not used to it!

But I need to link to this wonderful interview that Patrick Samphire did of Raymund Eich, who is a fantastic writer that you are probably not reading, but should. He's a patent agent and thus can write hard science fiction that will stand up to intellectual rigor - and which are just plain fantastic stories, if you ask me.

Included in this interview is this quote by Raymund, as he explains why he chose to indie publish his work:

I envision an optimistic future of "yeoman capitalism." Thomas Jefferson advocated an agrarian republic, where everyone was a self-employed, middle class smallholder. Computers, the internet, just-in-time manufacturing, and supply chain management make possible a high-tech version of Jefferson's dream society. Recent advances in ebooks, print-on-demand, and their related infrastructure now allow a writer to enter the publishing industry, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is.

Head on over to Patrick's site to read the rest of the interview!

Passing on the good news: Patrick Samphire's novel has sold!!!

2012-11-27T22:58:00.000Z

I know I've been very patchy about blogging. My indie writer alter ego has taken up much more of my life than I anticipated, what with her selling books and weird stuff like that. Not something I'm used to ;-)

But sometimes you hear news too good to not blog about. Patrick Samphire, another of my Clarion West classmates, has sold a novel to an imprint of MacMillan. He describes his book, entitled Secrets of the Dragon Tomb, thusly in his blog post:

It's steampunk! It's a thrilling adventure! It's set in the Regency. On Mars. It's full of despicable villains, deadly clockwork machines, unlikely spies, and terrible peril. And it has pterodactyls. Of course.

Basically, if it has Patrick Samphire's name on it, I know I'm going to like it. Those of you who knew me at Clarion West might recall me and Patrick getting into several fights and generally irritating each other - but even then I would've told you he's a great writer (even if Connie Willis had to tell me off for being too rude to him in a critique - true story). Eleven years later, with time to catch up on some much needed sleep and unwind from the intense stress, I'm very happy to count Patrick as a friend. His son even sent me a text the other day (not sure if Patrick knows that. I assume it was his son and not Patrick sending me blank texts.)

If you didn't catch the first two times I linked to his blog announcement in this post, you can click on this link to get there.

Shanghai Steam is launched and for sale

2012-11-07T21:50:00.001Z

Here's the cover for the Shanghai Steam anthology that I am in. It was launched last weekend at World Fantasy, but I've waited until after the hurricane and that election thingy we just had to post about it.

And here are the details from the anthology's site:

FROM ANCIENT CHINA TO A
FUTURE MARS. FROM THE BRITISH
EMPIRE TO THE OLD WEST

“Shanghai Steam is one of those anthologies you think will be one thing, but is surprisingly more…and I mean that in a good way. If you are expecting this to be a collection of simple oriental steampunk stories, then prepare yourself to be Shanghaied.” — Bram Stoker Award-winner, Michael Knost.

“Just when we thought steampunk had run out of, well, steam, these daring editors have reinvigorated the whole genre. A terrific collections of weird and wonderful tales.” – Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of TRIGGERS.

Nineteen authors show you new and ancient worlds filled with steam and Qi-powered machines, philosophical automatons, unusual heroes, paper lantern revolutions, flying monks and Martian pagodas. Dare to delve into tales ranging from tender to terrifying and comedic to courageous – you’ll find it all here.

Shanghai Steam, is a mashup of Chinese wuxia fantasy and steampunk. Vengeance, whimsy, horror and the fantastic.

This collection contains works by: Tim Ford, Amanda Clark, Laurel Anne Hill, K.H. Vaughan, Crystal Koo, Brent Nichols, Julia A. Rosenthal, William H. Keith, Shen Braun, Jennifer Rahn, Emily Mah, Frances Pauli, Camille Alexa, Tim Reynolds, Ray Dean, Frank Larnard, Derwin Mak, Nick Tramdack, and Minsoo Kang.

Available November 1, 2012

PRINT BOOK:
(Available at Amazon.com)
ISBN: 978-1-77053-022-5
Trade Paperback
5.5″ X 8.5″
$ 14.95
168 pages

E-BOOK:
(Available for Kindle and Kobo)
e-ISBN: 978-1-77053-023-2
$4.99 US

My interview of Melinda Snodgrass for Black Gate

2012-10-31T00:39:00.003Z

Today's blogpost is actually over on Black Gate and is an audio interview of my longtime friend and writer's group-mate, Melinda Snodgrass. Included in this interview is:

The latest scoop on her just released novel, This Case Is Gonna Kill Me, written as Phillipa Bornikova.
The story of how she wrote one of the most famous Star Trek episodes of all time. Prepare to be disgusted. She wrote it as a spec, sold it, and saw it produced. And there will be special screenings of the director's cut of it in select theaters soon.
Her current film project, writing a script for the Wild Cards franchise.
Hilarious stories from the set of her series pilot, Star Command.
Various random stuff about George RR Martin. Melinda is who Game of Thrones is dedicated to.

Hop on over to Black Gate to hear it all. The entire interview is about 44 minutes long.

Castles on the Sand is Free Today and Tomorrow

2012-10-24T12:51:00.001+01:00

You're all probably wondering where I've been the last month. Well, writing. I took a long hard look at my career to date, and since I have sold more books and made more money from indie publishing than all other outlets, I've decided to invest in a few more books and see where they take me. One of those books, Castles on the Sand, is free today and tomorrow on Amazon.

Synopsis:

Madison Lukas knows her place in the world. She’s not pretty, not interesting, and therefore easy to forget. When it comes to romance, she has to take whatever is on offer. John Britton has been praying for fifteen years to find the sister he lost in his parents’ divorce. She is beautiful, talented, and makes kindness a fine art. Few, if any, guys are worthy to date her. When John and Madison cross paths, he recognizes her at once, but Madison is certain that he’s got it all wrong. Even if she is his long-lost sister, she can’t possibly be the exceptional, amazing girl he thinks she is, can she?

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

2012-09-30T20:47:00.000+01:00

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always like spending more time with Thursday Next in her weird and wild world of alternate steampunk historical Britain in the 80's, and if that seems like a lot of adjectives strung together, then you need to take a deep breath before picking up this book. It's jammed full of subplots - so many that I'm not really sure which one I'd call the main plot. Thursday is told by her time traveling father that if Swindon doesn't win the SuperHoop (the world cup of the lawn croquet world) then a chain of events will lead to Armageddon, so there's that. Then there's also a character from fiction set to become the dictator of the UK, and no one can figure out which book he's from. Thursday wants to apprehend him, and his rise to power is supposedly tied to the SuperHoop. Add in Thursday's non-existent husband (a big evil corporation killed him as a child via time travel), Hamlet being stuck in the world of non-fiction while the characters in Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor stage a coup and try to combine the plays, two people out to kill Thursday: a minotaur from fiction and a contract killer called the Windowmaker (due to a mistype in the first set of stationery she ever ordered), Thursday losing her job at SpecOps, a plot to save banned Danish books from being burned, and then some Neanderthal rights issues. Those are the bigger plots. There are also smaller ones, like bringing the President back from death's door and suchlike.

While I do enjoy Fforde's writing, I also miss the relative straightforwardness of The Eyre Affair, which is just a great book. I'm hoping the rest of the books in this series don't keep getting more convoluted (and yes, I know they've all been out for years, I'm slow).

My first audio interview is up on Black Gate! 45 minutes with Jane Lindskold

2012-09-12T15:30:00.000+01:00

While I was back home in New Mexico, I decided to record some audio interviews with local writers, thinking that I could perhaps transcribe them, or see if Black Gate would let me post them. Turns out that if you tell the site admin that you've got a 40 minute audio interview with Jane Lindskold, the answer to whether you can post it on the site is a resounding yes. Black Gate is currently making changes so that people can subscribe to a podcast of me talking to various writers. This is an exciting new direction for me, and an excuse to call up cool people to talk to them about writing and speculative fiction.

Jane's wrote a lot of great books, but here I'll link my personal favorite, which is one of my favorite books of all time, Child of a Rainless Year. Think magical realism, New Mexican history, and a coming of age story for an adult, mature woman. Actually, even if that description doesn't hook you, just read the book. It's fantastic.

To hear Jane, click over to the first ever audio interview for Black Gate!

Kickstarter and Kirkus

2012-08-28T18:49:00.001+01:00

I know I'm overdue to post about my Kickstarter campaign for a Kirkus Review of Castles on the Sand. The more time passes, the more I have to say, so I'd better do this post before it becomes three. First let me talk about Kickstarter, and then about Kirkus.

Kickstarter enabled me to set up a campaign to raise money in exchange for rewards to the backers who pledged. I offered copies of a special edition of the book and was curious to see how many presales I could get. It seemed that the ideal situation would be to have fans come buy advance copies of the book and I just use their money for the review. I think for a lot of established artists, Kickstarter works this way.

I, obviously, am not all that established. Of my indie novels I've published two, one of which has been a solid hit. Not solid enough to live in luxury for the rest of my life, but in the ten months I've been an indie author, I have out earned my husband for two of them. I've clearly got fans, but not hordes of them. Another strike against Castles is the fact that it isn't connected to my hit, Someone Else's Fairytale, which will soon have a sequel of its own. Castles is also LDS fiction, technically, as one of the main characters is LDS. I don't think much of the divide between LDS vs. mainstream fiction, as I don't tell spiritual/inspirational stories in which conversion to religion solves anyones problems, but people used to the bright line demarkation will still consider my work to be non-mainstream.

Therefore, the people who turned out for my Campaign were friends and family. When I announced the campaign on Twitter, I got some backers. When I put it in Facebook, people poured in and funded it in full in a couple of days. Many reached deep into their pockets, pledging amounts that would clearly be a one time occurrence. Because this was my donor pool, this will be my last Kickstarter campaign for a while, simply because I'm not going to go back to the same people who gave so much and ask for another red cent. They've been more than supportive. Maybe, someday, if I get a broader fanbase, I'll try again, but who knows?

Now let's talk about the Kirkus Review. Kirkus provided a review with a fantastic quote that I plastered everywhere, on Goodreads, Amazon, etc. How many sales did the review generate? None that I can tell. My sales this first month that Castles has been out have been roughly on par with Fairytale's, though it's hard to say that absolutely. Fairytale started out at $.99 and free on Smashwords, so its sales on Amazon were only a small fraction of the downloads. Castles, I launched at $2.99, the price point I intend to occupy until I can build up a bigger fan base and revenue stream for myself.

Was the Kirkus Review worth it? Yes. It was essential to take that next step and invest a little more, even if the investment didn't earn immediate returns financially. It was important for me to prove to myself that I could get reviewed by the same Kirkus that reviews traditionally published books and walk away with a good review, on par with someone who's gone the traditional route. The review also opens the door to publicity services offered by Kirkus that I'll consider, but am not investing in these first few months.

More to the point, the Kirkus Review was exactly the right thing to finance with a Kickstarter Campaign. I'd like to think I rewarded my backers' faith in me by landing a good review. This book isn't in negative earnings, because I didn't spend my own money in the review. Also, from this experience I've gathered still more data on the world of publishing 2.0, which will only help me going forward.

All in all, a positive experience all around. But now I'm back to my old marketing tricks to build up a readership for Castles.

Castles on the Sand is out!

2012-08-20T15:56:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to say that my young adult/women's fiction novel, Castles on the Sand, was released today. Kirkus Reviews calls it, "A fast-paced blend of high-stakes drama and average teenage concerns (sex, appearance, friends), capped with a welcome message of hope."

The back cover blurb:

Madison Lukas knows her place in the world. She’s not pretty, not interesting, and therefore easy to forget.

John Britton is serving his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and has been praying for fifteen years to find the sister he lost in his parents’ divorce. She is beautiful, talented, and makes kindness a fine art.

And for good measure, here's the book trailer:

Last of all, buy links for the US and UK ;-)

Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam

2012-08-17T18:23:00.001+01:00

Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had the privilege of knowing Kiini for over a decade. We were classmates at Clarion West in 2001. One of the best things about that workshop was the people I met; Kiini and I write in very different niches in the genre, and yet she and I have been able to trade a lot of advice and anecdotes on the business of writing. She's also brilliant. Here's my review of her latest collection:

Salaam's a true master of the craft; I read her to learn as much as to enjoy. Her plots are delicately constructed, but I think of them in jeweler's terms. They are the setting for the gems that are her scenes that ooze passion, emotion, and sensuality. With clever formatting, she achieves cinematic intercut scenes, modulates the voice of characters to let us see them from the inside, and shows the scene from different such perspectives, your head spin if it wasn't all so enthralling.

People who know my work should note, Salaam writes with an unabashed sexuality. If you prefer my LDS chick lit, this is *definitely* different. Be ready to check preconceptions and inhibitions at the door. In Salaam's world, the depths of one man's shame are as expansive as our universe and the fall of an angel from a religion older than time evokes a soft pain washed away by morning. A former student of Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, Kiini Ibura Salaam takes the genre in new and mind blowing directions.

View all my reviews on Goodreads