Tag: Anthology

  • The Arrangement

    The Arrangement

    My friend Kacey Ezell has a great new space opera series out, called the Ashes of Entecea* and I’m thrilled to be part of Remnants of Empire*, a new anthology set in that universe. Remnants of Empire launches on 7/26/24.

    Duty, danger, and unexpected romance await in this captivating tale from the Remnants of Empire anthology!

    On the planet Raneaux, two young nobles are ready to part ways. But when a series of devastating attacks rock their world, everything changes. Thrust into a maelstrom of political intrigue and violence, Aidan and Deirdre must confront their true selves.

    He’s a scholar who dreams of quiet libraries. She longs for adventure. Now, they’re fighting for survival and the future of their planet.

    As assassins lurk and conspiracies unfold, Aidan and Deirdre discover strengths they never knew they possessed. But in a world turned upside down, can an unlikely partnership become something more?

    Experience heart-pounding action, complex characters, and the birth of an unexpected love that could change everything.

    Remnants of Empire brings you a collection of interconnected stories set in a richly imagined sci-fi universe. 

    The holographic ad touting off-world adventure holidays caught my eye. I slowed my rapid pace to admire the frozen landscape that morphed into images of divers swimming with amazing deep-sea creatures. Chills skittered across my skin as I aimed my ubiq at the ad so it could scan the relevant information.

    “Add to my wishlist,” I told it.

    “Confirming add to Deidre’s wishlist,” the ubiq replied. “Reminder: you have a lunch appointment with your parents in ten minutes. At your current rate of travel, it will take you seventeen minutes to reach your destination. Do you wish to send a status update?”

    I ignored the ubiq and promptly slipped it into my pocket. With any luck, Aidan would get to the restaurant first, and my fashionably late arrival wouldn’t matter. My parents adored my betrothed—what an archaic term. In their minds he was perfect. It’s why they arranged the marriage contract.

    Don’t get me wrong. Aidan is a wonderful man. Kind, attentive, but not my type. He’s very smart and scholarly, and it didn’t take us long to figure out that we have different goals in life. He wants to make a name for himself as a professor of history. I want to travel. I want to go places and skydive and swim with alien whales and get into zero-g sports. He finds libraries as interesting as I find them boring.

    We’d be horrible for each other. I’d feel held back, and he’d feel—well, I don’t know, abandoned maybe. It’d be one thing if I wanted to go off and adventure on my own for the rest of my life and then come back to hearth and home when I felt like it, but would that be fair to him? Or to me? What if I found someone with whom I could adventure with? What if he found someone to be a homebody with? Would we be stuck in one of those awful marriage-in-name only things?

    I had to step around a holo-ad that popped out of the ground. “Stay informed with our latest updates on anti-monarchist activities—” If you make the mistake of walking through one, they will follow you—well, your ubiq—everywhere.  I didn’t have time to deal with viral ads.

    Thank all that’s good that we’re both lesser nobility—Aidan’s father is, I think, fourth in line for the throne. Being so far from power is why we can say no to a marriage contract. There are no world-ending consequences to either of us wanting to live our own lives. I doubt the ‘casts will even announce it, and if they do it’ll be buried in the day’s feed, and no one will care.

    My consolations and the rehearsed speech that I’d been working on since Aidan and I decided to part ways rolled around in my head as I made my way from the mag-rail station to Le Goût de l’Elysée. It’s the kind of place one goes to for special occasions like engagements and anniversaries, and that is no doubt why my mother chose it. 

    It was also the kind of place frequented by Raneaux’s planetary royals and judiciars and prime ministers and celebrities from all over Entecea. Frankly, I’m allergic to all those people, although I do endure them for my parents’ sake.

    As I crossed the cobblestone pathway, I wished I’d picked something other than spiky heels. There was a dress code though, so I had dressed up, partly out of guilt. I knew going into this just how disappointed our parents were going to be, and for some reason, I had thought that one of my nicer, semi-formal dresses would somehow make up for it. This one was gray, asymmetrical, with a high neck and cap sleeves, a minimalist design with sculpted details, and everything someone like me was supposed to be wearing for something important. Like I said, guilt, or maybe apology. But in dress form.

    The upside to l’Elysée was going to be that no one was going to dare make a scene—even though neither of our mothers were that type. It had been Aidan’s idea. See, I told you he was clever. And so very smart. 

    I sighed. Oh, if that were only enough. If only we had chemistry. I wanted that thrill, those butterflies, that out-of-control-in-love feeling. I wanted it all. Preferably now. And forevermore.

    Doormen in matching uniforms, complete with caps and white gloves, swung the doors open as I approached. It’s such things that make l’Elysée an experience in itself, particularly for the nostalgic.

    The foyer was done in a deconstructed chandelier, where each crystal was suspended by invisible nanofibers. To me, it had always looked like an exploded diagram of a chandelier, instead of an assembled piece. Art, I guess.

    The maître’d looked up from his tablet and shot me a smile. “Ah, Miss Pinet. How good to see you.”

    “Good morning. Are my parents here yet?”

    “Yes, Miss. They were seated about twenty minutes ago. Lady and Lord Stout have also been seated.”

    “And Professor Stout?”

    “I’m afraid not. Would you like us to ping his ubiq with a reminder or request his current location?”

    Sometimes people like the maître’d expected people like me to above carrying ubiqs. The really important people didn’t. Their staffers and aides did.

    “No, thank you. I can do it myself.”

    “Very well. This way, Miss.”

    And so he led me through the main dining room with its fleet of curved banquettes and gazebo-like hooded loveseats. It wasn’t quite noon yet, but I knew that it would soon be filled with glitterati, with the cream of Raneaux society coming together to impress each other over fancy lunches.

    The parents sat cozily on the veranda. It really was a lovely day for it with spring sunshine pouring in through slats strategically placed so that the light wouldn’t bother anyone’s eyes. Floral scents floated on the breeze, just a hint of them so as not to interfere with the more discerning palates that were bound to be l’Elysée’s best customers. It was no surprise that my mother had been making noises about having them cater the wedding. I just hoped that she hadn’t already booked them.

    Mother wore a long dress with a bolero top—lavender, of course. Lady Stout was in a similar outfit, but in mint green. It made me think they’d coordinated and that made my stomach hurt. Father and Lord Stout both wore what I called their uniforms—tunic-like business jackets that hit mid-thigh and pressed trousers, high-collared shirts, and cravats—like they might stop by the House of Lords and argue for this or that or the other. 

    The two empty chairs beckoned like a challenge. I really didn’t want to face them alone.

    Nevertheless, I braced myself.

    Here. I. Go.

    Read the rest in Remnants of Empire.

    *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

  • One-of-Antonia Excerpt

    One-of-Antonia Excerpt

    On May 3, 2023, my latest short-story will be out as part of The Ross 248 Project, a hard-sf shared-world anthology edited by Les Johnson and Ken Roy.

    I am thrilled to join Patrick Chiles, Stephanie Osborn, Brent Ziarnick, Laura Montgomery, Daniel M. Hoyt & E. Marshall Hoyt, Matthew Williams, D. J. Butler, Robert E. Hampson, J. L. Curtis, and K. S. Daniels on this roster of great hard-sf stories. Everyone one of these writers brings in their unique perspective, background, experience, and style to this anthology. I hope you check out their backlists.

    You can pre-order or check out the early release version of The Ross 248 Project here.

    HUMANITY’S HOPE FOR A BETTER FUTURE AT A NEW STAR

    A bold journey into a future where humanity and its children travel to a new star where they must overcome the unexpected challenges on the exoplanets that await them—or die trying.

    Traveling to the stars will be difficult, but not, perhaps, the most difficult part. What about when we get to another star? What then? Will the planets be immediately habitable? Not likely. Will those who undertook the journey be able to easily turn around and come home if they don’t find “Earth 2.0”? Almost certainly not. Therein lies the challenge: Finding worlds that are potentially habitable and then taking the time, perhaps centuries, to make them compatible with Earth life. They will encounter mysteries and unexpected challenges, but the human spirit will endure. Join this diverse group of science fiction writers and scientists as they take up the challenge of The Ross 248 Project.

    Here is the opening scene from One-of-Antonia

    The man in front of Suri was neither sick nor old. Despite the tubes and wires, the monitoring equipment around him, and the fact that they were in Pluto’s premiere clinic for the dying, he was very much a man in his prime. According to his file, Aidan Samuels was forty-two. It was an imprecise measurement—his real age was forty-two years, six months, three days, and sixteen-point-thirty-six hours—one that grated on Suri’s “nerves” such as they were. Tolerating such things without comment was one of the many adjustments that she had had to make.

    She may not have liked it, but humans trusted those who looked and acted like them more than those who did not, especially when it came to their health. That’s why she was wearing a humanoid skin rather than an arachnid one, even though having extra arms would have come in handy for most situations.

    “I don’t understand,” she said, glancing at the virtual-reality clinic supervisor.

    Dr. Benedict Lammens was tall for a human, one-point-nine-eight meters. She knew that he had let his hair go gray because he believed it gave him credibility and she could tell that the glasses he wore were just for the smart-glass lenses. Appearances were important to humans. They went to great lengths to project, not just credibility, but trustworthiness, intelligence—an entire list of positive traits—and mitigate an even longer list of negative ones. Would a four- or eight-armed surgeon with telescoping eyes convey competence and skill? Probably not. More likely to give them nightmares. 

    She filed the idea away, a side project for later, and connected to the clinic’s network. Samuels’ file said that he had gone into a very private and highly customized virtual reality in order to be with his dying wife. When her human body had failed, her corpse had been preserved for a later time in the hope that a cure for her neurological disease would be found. Her corpse had been placed in the family’s vault. There were thousands of such family vaults here on Pluto. It was known for its cryo facilities.

    While Samuels and his wife had been in the VR, thirty years had passed for them. They had essentially enjoyed their “golden years” while only a year had passed in the real world. 

    “Mr. Samuels here is refusing to come out of the VR,” Lammens said.

    “As is his right,” Suri noted, scrolling through the agreements between the SAIN and Samuels. “According to this, the Host agreed to keep him in VR for as long as he wanted.”

    “Unfortunately, the board of 3D-Printed-Homes wants him back in the boardroom,” Lammens said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat. “Some dispute or other. They need his vote to break a tie. Something about a takeover that might destroy the company he inherited from his father. Apparently the Martian cartels are involved and frankly it sounds rather messy.”

    “And he knows this?” she asked as she looked Samuels over.

    “The Host told him. He doesn’t care.”

    “Thirty years have passed for him,” Suri said, scanning through the VR’s logs. It had been just him and his wife for most of that time. There had been other constructs in there, but only artificial ones. No other real person had plugged in and interacted with them except for the Host. “And he’s just lost his wife. Of course he doesn’t care.”

    “We need some time to sort things out with his Board.” Lammens shrugged. “They’ve threatened to pull his credit, force our hand. Sue us. It could get ugly and undermine the trust in both SAIN and our facilities here.”

     Suri had worked with terminal patients and their families before. She didn’t understand grief herself, but she did have to work with it and around it. It was as much a part of working with humans as fixing their bodies was.

    She took hold on Samuels’ left hand. It was cool to the touch, with fading callouses and a simple gold band for a wedding ring. Tiny scars peppered three of his fingers and the backs of both hands. A man whose family had their own vault here, who could afford non-subjective years in VR, hadn’t had those tiny scars removed. Often such things were indicative of sentiment or a lack of vanity.

    She reviewed his public appearances. Not a vain man, but one who definitely understood the importance of appearance enough to opt into standard enhancements—teeth, hair, eyes. A man who liked to work with his hands too by the look of it—there were lots of images of him doing physical labor, building things, making things.

    Humans had such strange affectations. She ran her fingers along the pale scars. Nicks really, tiny little things. What had made them? She wanted to know. It would help her understand humans, which would help her help them, keep them alive, keep them healthy, give her purpose.

    There was a hum in the back of her mind, like a warm caress. She smiled. Antonia, her AI-mother approved. A human would have said that she was giving her blessing. 

    A plan to help Samuels and the decision to proceed was processed at AI speeds. She let go of Samuels’ hand and sat down in the chair next to his bed. 

    “Wait, what are you doing?” Lammens asked.

    “My job.”

    In the time it took her to answer, she ported the specs for her VR avatar to the Host. Suri liked to keep things simple. She liked to manifest as the statistically likely progeny of the two humans who had raised her.

    After all, she was Catrina and Ian Hinman’s daughter as much as she was Antonia’s. So she’d adopted her foster father’s dark hair and mismatched eyes (one blue, one brown) as well as her foster mother’s oval face and sun-kissed skin. 

    Last time she’d been in VR her avatar had worn an eclectic mix of calf-length skirt with a bustle, combat boots, corset-top, and short, bolero jacket with epaulets, all in blues and greens. She discarded the idea of aging her avatar, since most humans, especially older ones, presented as younger, healthier versions of themselves. VR was seductive because one could be anything, or anyone, and things weren’t what they seemed.

    Lammens had stepped back, a skeptical look on his face. But he didn’t say anything. She took it as assent.   

    Suri closed her eyes. She and SAIN came to an agreement at AI-speeds: unless Samuels’ real-world body was in danger, no one was to intervene or interfere. Once inside, she’d be stuck in the VR with Samuels until he agreed to leave or they shut it down and forced him out. Suri would be cut off, her ties to SAIN and her AI-mother severed. 

    She felt herself move as if through a tunnel of light, riding effortlessly through corridors that didn’t exist in physical space.

    The final bit of it, entering Aidan Samuels’ VR, was like fighting her way through a wall of fire. If she’d had any sense of self-preservation, she’d have turned back. 

    Samuels didn’t want her there. That much was clear. Painfully so.

  • Age of Samurai–A stunning docudrama

    Age of Samurai–A stunning docudrama

    If you haven’t watched Netflix’s Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan, you should. I highly recommend it. It is not just visually stunning, but this docudrama has all the action and intensity of a well-written fictional epic. It is about as far as you can get from boring history lessons and well worth your time.

    The series

    One of the narrators is Stephen Turnbull*, is an “old friend” of mine. It was his book, Samurai: The Story of Japan’s Greatest Warriors, that I picked up when waiting for my kids to finish up at the library. It is one of the three books (the second one being on genetic engineering and the third being on nanotechnology) responsible for the Ravages of Honor series.

    Not only are the narrators experts in their fields, this dramatized account of history emphasizes the relationships between the people making history, rather than dry, pedantic statistics related to dates, troop movements, and other non-sense that is likely to be forgotten the moment it’s not needed for a test.

    Great acting, wonderful stories, amazing characters, my only complaint is that it is only six episodes of forty-five minutes each when it could be much longer.

    Noteworthy

    So much of what I was seeing in this docudrama resonated with me, that I started taking notes, mostly ones that might be of use for further stories in my Ravages of Honor universe.

    In case you’re new, my space opera series features genetically engineering warriors modeled — you guessed it — on the samurai. But it doesn’t just stop at the swords and honor codes. My writing also relies rather heavily on my favorite romantic trope–enemies-to-lovers.

    When genres blur

    One of the more interesting things about the enemies-to-lovers trope is that Jane Austen* is credited with creating it, via her most famous work, Pride and Prejudice*.

    As someone who didn’t grow up in the entitled First World where marrying for love, infatuation, or just hooking up was a valid thing, I’ve always found this interesting. History is full of stories where men and women married not just strangers, or people they didn’t love, but people who were their actual enemies.

    This is why I used the enemies-to-lovers trope in Ravages of Honor, not because I was going for some Regency in space.

    I used it because it’s hardwired into the samurai history I used as background for the donai. The marriages and concubinal arragements of this period (and others throughout history) precedes the Regency period and its ballrooms by centuries.

    Austen may have popularized enemies-to-lovers, but she didn’t invent it, and it saddens me to see what has been tradition throughout most of human history relegated to second place because we have no knowledge (or appreciation) of why these things happened. It means all the struggles and sacrifices of the people (usually women, but men as well) caught between duty, honor, and passion has been forgotten.

    The Ravages of Honor series, has far more in common with feudal Japan than it does with the ballrooms of Regency England. So, while the sparks, tension, and forbidden fruit of the enemies-to-lovers trope runs strong not just in Conquest but in the rest of the series, it is based on the political intrigues of a feudal culture, not ballroom dances and the matchmaking aspirations of mothers.

    So, if you like Byronic heroes (Mr. Darcy was one), actual strong women (like Elizabeth Bennett), but want to trade the gossip and manipulations of the Regency era for political alliances where millions of lives are at stake, where freedom and survival on a planetary scale are hang in the balance, where the ravages of honor are borne by grace and strength, then I hope you’ll give my take on the enemies-to-lovers trope a try.

    • Cover for Ravages of Honor: Conquest (Book 1)
    • Cover for Ravages of Honor: Ascension (Book 2)
    • Cover for Ravages of Honor Lineage
    • Cover for Dominion: A Ravages of Honor Novella
    • Cover for Featherlight: A Ravages of Honor Novella

    *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

  • Excerpt from Resilience, coming June 7, 2022 in Robosoldiers

    Excerpt from Resilience, coming June 7, 2022 in Robosoldiers

    When Stephen Lawson* asked me to be part of his new Baen* anthology, Robosoldiers* an anthology about augmented soldiers and military robotics I wasn’t sure what I was going to end up writing. Unlike all the militarily credentialed co-authors in this anthology (some of these guys are real heavy hitters) I am the fork-and-knife school variant, if even that. I don’t have any military service or credentials. Country of origin did matter in the mid-1980s when I was still a cadet and aspiring to be more. The more was out of reach for many reasons, including the peace dividend that came out of the fall of the Berlin wall, a good thing.

    My experiences have been on the other side of conflict–the civilians, the refugees, the collateral damage. I was born and grew up behind the Iron Curtain. I didn’t realize just how meaningless those two words had become until recently when a clerk asked me where “the incident” took place and I said “behind the Iron Curtain.” Without batting an eyelash she asked me the date and address so that she could request the medical records. I guess she was thinking it was a night club or something and maybe an ambulance or hospital was involved because she certainly gave no indication that she actually understood what she was asking for. When I related her request to close friends they suggested I give her the address of Ceaucescu’s grave or perhaps that of the Sighetul Marmatiei Memorial Museum for Communism Victims. I maintain that it would still be lost on her (and her ilk).

    Stephen did jokingly tell me what he didn’t want (I am first and foremost a romance writer, whether that means romance or Romance) which is always helpful. So for those of you who read me primarily for my romances, know that Resilience* is not a Romance or a love story, although I could not resist working in a slight romantic angle at the end.

    Readers and fans of mil-sf, like readers and fans of all other genres, are always clamoring for something new. For something different. So I gave it to them. In case I haven’t said it, Stephen, thanks for affording me this opportunity because you knew going into it that it was going to be different and let me play anyway.

    What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or so they say. 

    They are full of shit.

    But then again, philosophy has never been my strong suit.

    Shrug.

    My scars are the first thing people notice about me. Even as they avoid noticing, looking anywhere but my face, the scars define me in their eyes. 

    Not my rank—Sergeant.

    Not my name—Engel, Karlie.

    Not my uniform—Air Force.

    It took me awhile to get used to the locked gazes, the way people’s eyes would unwaveringly lock onto mine because eyes are supposed to be safe.

    “It’s not your fault.”

    I know it’s not. 

    One of the more annoying things about my PTSD implant (or my anti-PTSD implant as the doctors would like me to think of it) was the way it—oops, I’m supposed to think of the intelligent agent as “she”—talked to me. It wasn’t its fault. It was the way “she” was programmed. She goes by Nicki. It’s supposed to be a “she” because female rape survivors are paired up with female counselors. Something about trust.

    Like so many sailors, soldiers, marines, and airmen—I was never really alone in this—I was a casualty of war. Wrong place. Wrong time. 

    As far as billets went, a military air traffic controller in Germany was about as safe an assignment as possible. I wasn’t going into a war zone or into combat. 

    Unfortunately no one told the bad guys. And they wouldn’t have cared. I was alone and unarmed. I hadn’t even been in uniform. Just another tourist as far as they were concerned. That is, until they found my ID.

    “Ground yourself in the present,” Nicki said. Her voice was always calm, hypnotic, meant to be soothing, and supposedly tailored just for me.

    I took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly to a count of four, my belly rising, my hand against my chest. It was supposed to be calming, part of a set of coping mechanism that I’d been taught. I did it to shut Nicki down. It—she—always booted up when my hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis kicked into overdrive. I hated that I knew that term. I shouldn’t have to know what an HPA-axis was.

    About two years ago, I was recruited for a clinical trial to help test brain implant technology. Never my favorite thing, the MRI was even less so after my month of captivity. The jack-hammer sounds of the magnet were too reminiscent of gunfire, the having to lay still too reminiscent of being bound to a bed, the voices drifting in over the speakers too much like their disembodied voices as I escaped into my head while I lay helpless underneath them. 

    And having to relive it all so the MRI could map my brain was no picnic either. 

    “This is a flashback. It’s not real,” Nicki reassured me.

    It had been with me for about a year. Nicki controlled the circuitry—fine wires much smaller than a human hair—running through my brain and I had benefited from some of the physical stuff the implant does. Thanks to the mapping done by the MRIs, the implant knows which parts of my brain become active during a flashback. It keeps track not just of my pulse and temperature and respiration, but a bunch of other stuff. I stopped trying to figure it out. All I needed to know was that high levels of certain chemicals were bad and low were good and that the implant stimulates parts of the brain to counteract them. And then Nicki activates.

    It—she—is a little bit like the imaginary friend a kid might have: completely real to me, right down to the way she “smells.” There’s a light blue halo all around her, something the designers put in, so that I wouldn’t think she was an actual person I was seeing. Thank God for small favors.

    It has appeared to me as different people. I’ll be watching TV and find a character I connect with and poof, Nicki takes on her form, her mannerism, her facial expressions. She sounds like the character too, which bothers me far more than the other things. I think it was the blindfold. They kept it on almost the entire time. 

    So, I’ve stopped watching television shows or movies. I’d always been more of a reader anyway, but after a few months, she started manifesting as the female characters in my imagination, so she robbed me of that too.

    “Where are you, Karlie?” Nicki asked.

    The kitchen. I’m in the kitchen.

    “What are you doing?”

    Boiling water.

    Except that there was no longer water in the pot. It was gone and the pot was giving off a metallic smell reminiscent of the way guns smell as they heat up. All that was missing was the sulfur and that too kicked in, a phantom scent courtesy of my memory. 

    With a trembling hand, I shut off the burner and leaned against the kitchen counter so I wouldn’t curl up on the ground. Once again, I’d become lost in the white-noise of boiling water. The last thing I remembered was standing over the stove, watching the first bubbles form along the pot’s bottom.

    I’d wanted pasta with butter and garlic.

    But not anymore.



    • Cover for Ravages of Honor: Conquest (Book 1)
    • Cover for Ravages of Honor: Ascension (Book 2)
    • Cover for Ravages of Honor Lineage
    • Cover for Dominion: A Ravages of Honor Novella
    • Cover for Featherlight: A Ravages of Honor Novella

    *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

  • Excerpt from “Good of the Many”

    Excerpt from “Good of the Many”

    I’m very excited to share with you the opening of my short story, Good of the Many, released today in Worldbreakers, an anthology edited by Tony Daniel and Christopher Rucchio.

    Dedication

    Greater love hath no man…in recognition of the brave souls, Peter Wang, Alaina Petty, and Martin Duque. You embraced your duty sooner than you should have had to.

    There’s nothing quite like walking into a tomb, although technically—I guess—it’s not. We’re not exactly underground or under a church, even though storage unit six is part of the UENS Sanctuary (T-AH-1749) and her motto is “For the good of the many.”

    That must make stasis pod 06-004 a crypt. No, that also didn’t fit. No one—not one of the hundreds of citizens—inside Sanctuary were dead. Technically.

    There were two dozen sealed pods inside unit six, each one twice as wide and deep as a coffin, but not twice as long. My steps echoed as I made my way down the rows and rows of pods, trailing a pool of light cast by a lantern floating off my right shoulder. Its repulsor field made a barely audible hum as its weak light cast long shadows. Shadows that slithered in a place where nothing had moved since I was here exactly one year ago.

    I shuddered, my skin crawling and dimpling into goosebumps that raised the hairs on my arms.

    Get hold of yourself, Elena.

    (more…)

  • Happy Father’s Day!

    As promised, in honor of Father’s Day, To Be Men: Stories Celebrating Masculinity is live. If you pre-ordered, your eBook is available for download now.

    Whether you like science fiction, fantasy, military sci-fi, historical, or contemporary, adventure, humor, interesting characters, or even thought pieces, this anthology has a story for you.

    My story, “Cooper” is a tribute to Jeff Cooper, one of the iconic, real-life figures associated with the M1911 and the 45ACP. This story was inspired not just by the idea of a sentient/sapient gun. I also found inspiration in The Wizard of Oz, in the fact that the Tin Man had in him, what he was so desperately seeking–a heart. Like the Tin Man, my protagonist is in search of something he thinks he’s lost.

    Scott Bell‘s gritty cop story, “Earning It” explores the meaning of valor and honor. A writer with a unique voice, Scott balances out the grittiness with his trademark humor.

    J Trevor Robinson‘s “Let the Chips Fall Where They May” doesn’t give us the “gentlemen thieves” of the typical pop-culture casino heist story. Inspired by his own father, it is instead the story of a commander, a role model, and a father responsible for the lives of so many others.

    William C. Burns answers the question “So, what are wizards doing in the 21st century?” in his fantasy, “The Heaven Beasts.”

    Karina L. Fabian serves up a noir-style detective story complete with dragons and fae. If you’re a fan of the movie, Bright, this one is definitely for you.

    Michael W. Herbert, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, wrote two stories for this anthology, both based on real life events–one about dealing with rape, and another about defending a gay shipmate. I’m particularly fond of the way he handled both of these controversial subjects. As Michael says, “A mature man does not always know what to do, but he will do what he can to help.”

    Richard Paolinelli gives us a dystopian story, “The Last Hunt.” Unlike so many other zombie stories, this one is about one man’s devotion to his duty and his country.

    If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan, I think you’ll really enjoy Ann Margaret Lewis‘s “The Affair of Miss Finney.” Holmes pursued many dark crimes, but Doyle never addressed the crime of rape. So, how would Holmes deal with the worst crime a woman can suffer?

    In “For Man or Beast,” award-winning science fiction author Brad R. Torgersen, plunges us into a story about a future, untamed frontier where we discover that it is about being men and women that makes us essential not just to each other, but to civilization.

    “Street Fox” by C. J. Brightley is set in her Erdemen Honor universe. Children need to believe in heroes. And not just in this fantasy, but in the real world.

    In “Bring the Pain,” veteran and writer T. L. “Tom” Knighton, delights and entertains us with a story about a guy who is, quite literally, a tank.

    In “The Messenger” Lloyd Behm II makes us cheer for an aging green beret who keeps his oaths, even in a post-apocalyptic world where the US no longer exists.

    Marina Fontaine‘s “Picture Imperfect” is set in the near-future dystopia of her Chasing Freedom novel. Her hero is forced to choose between protecting his family and complying with a system that provides him with comfort and power.

    Jon Del Arroz‘s military sci-fi adventure, “Compassion,” shows us that we must continue to fight the good fight, to fight for what is right.

    Newcomer Jamie Ibson‘s story, “Priorities” takes us into the world of the school resource officer, the cops that investigate offenses involving students and schools.

    No speculative fiction anthology would be complete a werewolf story, right? Julie Frost‘s “Man-Made Hell” mixes science-fiction and the supernatural, giving us a character who embodies virtus (the manly virtues) no matter his form.

     

  • Story before identity–then, now, and forever

    I’ve been a reader for far longer than I’ve been a writer. Not once, during my most voracious phase as a reader, during those summers spent at the library, did I go, “Hmm, I want to read a book by a/an [insert identity group] writer.”

    What I was looking for, was escapism, entertainment. A good story, well told. Interesting characters. Interesting milieu. Romance. Adventure.

    I don’t think I’m alone in this. I spent a lot of time discussing books with my fellow geeks–and to be honest, if you want to get all PC about it, they were a diverse lot. When it came to reading, they wanted the same things I did.

    I didn’t need to have a woman as the protagonist in order to identify with a character. I didn’t need that character to be of the same national origin or race either. Why? Because well-crafted characters (and stories) transcend all those things.

    I don’t have to be bisexual for Friday Jones to be one of my favorite of Heinlein’s characters. I don’t have to be a gay sadist to love Augustus (one of the minor characters in R. M. Meluch’s wonderful space opera series, Tour of the Merrimack (6 Book Series)).

    Believe it or not, I didn’t pick up my first Honor Harrington novel because it had a woman on the cover–shocker, I know!

    I don’t go out seeking stories with protagonists of Romanian, or Hungarian, or Greek, or Italian descent. I don’t seek out stories written by immigrants. Or women. Or any of the “identities” or associations some people would love to pin on me.

    That’s one of the reasons I am proud that my short story “Cooper” is part of To Be Men: Stories Celebrating Masculinity. You see, there was no requirement that you be a man to submit a story. Or that the story even be from a man’s perspective.

    Marina Fontaine, one of my co-authors, put it best, when she wrote:

    We were going to give them good stories.

    Stories about men as heroes and role models, fathers and mentors, hardened warriors and even fantastic creatures. Men who are interesting, capable and worthy. Characters whom you’d want to meet, to spend time with, to learn from, and whose stories will stay with you after the reading is over.

    And just like that, the authors’ gender became irrelevant.

    The rest of her excellent article on how this anthology came to be can be read here. Give it a look. And buy the book. See what can happen, when stories are about Story [rather than the author’s identity].

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • A rejection is an opinion, not a death sentence (part six)

    Part One

    Part Two

    Part Three

    Part Four

    Part Five

    Mar. 2nd, 2018

    Are we there yet?

    Anyone who has spent five days in a conference room, six nights in a hotel bed, and played Russian roulette with every meal in a strange place not famous for its culinary delights (yes, I’m a foodie; sue me) knows what I’m talking about. By this point, I’m just ready to be done. The end can’t come fast enough and even the upcoming TSA “experience” is something that doesn’t look as bad as the memory of the most recent TSA “experience” fades. Even the support and camaraderie of my fellow writers, the companionship of my husband, is not enough to make me want to face this day.

    I have to give you a little background on this one. I didn’t want to write this story and despite the nine hours (in one day) it took to get it on paper, it was the most difficult one for me personally. The theme was “passions,” whether it was something that led to passion or a crime of passion.

    A preference was stated for crime/mystery and science fiction or fantasy were not allowed. Seeing as I mostly write science fiction and don’t read crime/mystery I felt totally unprepared. The additional requirement that it NOT be an intellectual puzzle, but focus on the emotion made it even more difficult.

    I wanted to skip this assignment altogether.

    I didn’t for two reasons. First of all, I was always that student, the one that never blows off an assignment, never turns in anything late, etc. (Yes, you can hate me; I’m used to it.) Second of all, I’m paying good money to be here, so I’d be short-changing myself. Third, I do know what I’m passionate about. Anyone who knows me well knows this.

    Even though I finished this story on the day I got the submission guidelines, I waited. By Wednesday, I knew that if I didn’t send it out now, I would not send it out at all. I had several big fears about this one, beside it being too close to my heart. I wasn’t sure how much of a risk this story would be. I also wrote it in first person (a distancing technique) and I pulled back even further by using a lot of filters, even though this was the “Disney” version of events.

    The summary: Fictionalized account of true events and crimes under the Ceaucescu regime as told by a survivor of communism. Renata’s childhood experiences drive her passion for and love of America.

    • Editor 1: Pacing issues but still got into it; startlingly good.
    • Editor 2: Wow; really well done; compelling narrator voice kept him in there; liked wrap; really nailed emotions; played on the heart strings; parts had a dreamlike quality; backed away from the emotion in places; showed atrocities at arm’s length; powerful prose; loved the ending; move in closer (i.e. close narrative distance by removing filters for example).
    • Editor 3: Without question a powerful story; not sure it’s a crime of passion; they’re government crimes; might not fit concept; no idea who is being lectured; need a cause for narrator’s reaction, so it’s not a general conversation.
    • Editor 4: Agrees with editor 3; thought character was too passive; wasn’t powerful for her.
    • Editor 5: Worked for her because [the editor] lived through the Cold War; liked it; character’s passivity is exactly what communism would do to a human being; would’ve bought it.
    • Buying editor: Spectacularly written; disagrees with editor 1 because the literary nature of the story needs big paragraphs to slow down the reader and let him see the horrid life the character saw; the character is talking to all of us who dismiss other people’s painful stories, so it doesn’t need details about the person being responded to; the passivity is absolutely logical; the character is NOT passive at the end; passionate for new country;  it’s about the character learning how to be active; works well; great writing; difficult things that are being addressed; buy.

    I was still recovering from the word “buy” from Kristine Katherine Rusch when Dean Wesley Smith (editor 1 in this case) said he went back to re-read this particular story after working with me on my space opera pacing issues. He told me that if I can get this kind of emotion and power into everything I write, readers will be flocking to me in droves.

    I tell you this not to brag, but because I know that as writers we tend to focus far too much on the criticism we get rather than the praise. We don’t hear or take in positive things like we hear or take in negative things. While this may be especially true of writers (including myself), I think it’s very much a human trait, and it’s there for a good reason—survival. Our brains are wired to respond to threats so that we can run or fight, and this tendency to give the negative power over us is part of that survival mechanism.

    I come away from this intense and exhausting week, a better writer.

    My purpose in sharing this, especially with all of you writers and would-be writers, was to show you–really, truly, show you–that a rejection is not fatal, and that it is contingent on many factors.

    Please, please, please, note how many times something was “liked” but not bought. Please note the difference between taste, personal preference, and the wide range of possible interpretations based not just on the editor’s life experience, but also on editorial goals/requirements:

    • Did this story fit the theme?
    • Did the word count justify extra length?
    • Was the writer willing to make changes knowing that even with requested changes, it might be rejected?
    • Was the story fixable in the time the editor had?
    • How did the presence of other stories influence the take on your story?

    One unique aspect of this workshop was that editors bought pieces submitted to other anthologies. That’s how I ended up with two sales. One to the anthology I originally wrote it for, and one to an anthology which rejected the piece I wrote for it but bought a story I wrote for a different anthology.

    You won’t find that in a slush-pile setting, but its equivalent is “send it out again.” Find another market for it. Even one element of the story can fit another theme and get you another chance to have someone say “buy.”

    So send it out again.

    And again.

    Postscript:

    You may recall from my first post about this workshop that we were supposed to read the stories as if we were buying them, i.e. generating a table of contents for each anthology, as if we were buying. It was essentially the equivalent of saying “I liked it” and nothing else. Only three of the other writers in the workshop included The Greatest Crime on their buy list. Remember when I said that only the buying editor’s opinion matters? This is why.

    Not only are we the worst judges of our own writing, other writers don’t do so well either. By the way, I didn’t go look at the lists. I don’t know which of my other stories made it onto the lists (someone else in the workshop brought this story’s “count” to my attention). I avoided looking at the list because in the end, other writers’ opinions don’t matter either.

    So take those opinions with a grain of salt—a big grain—as well.

    It’ll save your sanity.

    And your writing.

  • A rejection is an opinion, not a death sentence (part five)

    Part One

    Part Two

    Part Three

    Part Four

    Mar. 1st, 2018

    The fifth story was an exploration of dragons.

    The first thing the buying editor admitted to was the fact that she did not articulate what she wanted as well as she thought she had. Unfortunately, that wasn’t apparent until she got the stories and it was too late to do anything about it. This brought up another important point about things that influence editorial decision-making. When they get a lot of stories that aren’t quite right (for whatever reason) the pressure on their time increases. They need to keep an eye on these time pressures, so they are more likely to buy stories that don’t need work.

    Read the rest here: Rejection 101: A Writer’s Guide

    Part Six

  • A rejection is an opinion, not a death sentence (part five)

    Part One

    Part Two

    Part Three

    Part Four

    Mar. 1st, 2018

    The fifth story was an exploration of dragons.

    The first thing the buying editor admitted to was the fact that she did not articulate what she wanted as well as she thought she had. Unfortunately, that wasn’t apparent until she got the stories and it was too late to do anything about it. This brought up another important point about things that influence editorial decision-making. When they get a lot of stories that aren’t quite right (for whatever reason) the pressure on their time increases. They need to keep an eye on these time pressures, so they are more likely to buy stories that don’t need work.

    So, one editorial lesson learned was that articulating the requirement/expectations for the stories is critical to not getting a bunch of stories that are an automatic no. For example, clarifying that the dragon be essential (rather than incidental) to the story would’ve avoided some automatic no’s; another element that should have been clarified was the requirement that the story could not be one where it was just a human in dragon form.

    We also found out that sometimes a rejection is more about what’s going on in an editor’s life at the time than anything else. One editor had just lost a friend to cancer and could not bring herself to read any stories involving hospitals. Another editor was too close to a national disaster and could not read anything related to that disaster. The details don’t matter, just know that sometimes your story may hit a note or a chord that is too painful for an editor to endure and your story will not be read. Nope, there’s nothing you can do about it, and no one is going to put all their issues into a submission call for the world to see.

    There is also the chance that an editor knows too much about a subject and will reject your story because it’s their area of expertise and something in your story didn’t work for them. A non-expert, on the other hand, would never get tripped up and think it worked just fine. The area of expertise could be anything from actually having lived in a town you described, the editor writing in that historical period or sub-genre, or being a subject-matter expert who did their thesis on the subject.

    As far as my own story for this anthology, I knew right away that I wanted to do something Arthurian. I loved The Crystal Cave and the movie Excalibur. One of the elements I wanted to use was the idea that the Land was the Dragon. I loved the scenes where Merlin calls forth the breath of the Dragon (the fog) to stage Arthur’s conception. But I also wanted to twist it and not make it about Arthur, but about Merlin.

    Summary: Zimeu—a dragonkin—travels to Alwion (Britain) in disguise, to help save mankind from a coming dark age, but he arrives too early. On his way back, he crosses paths with a woman who is about to die in childbirth, and uses his magic to save her and her son, leaving mankind with a guide (Merlin) rather than the leader (Arthur) he’d originally intended.

    • Editor 1: Doesn’t read dragon stories (If you’re wondering why some editor who hates dragons was reading here, it’s because they each were part of this workshop, but were not buying for this anthology.)
    • Editor 2: Despite hating dragons and dragon stories, pulled in by dragon in lab/library; quality of the writing pulled him through the rest of the way; loved element of shift and balance; loved tension and dialogue; loved birthing scene; strong maybe.
    • Editor 3: Loved the dragons; loved Arthurian overlay; writing felt rushed; needs more emotion; would’ve sent it back in for rewrite for emotion.
    • Editor 4: It was great; liked idea of dragon culture as root for Arthurian legend; intellectually appealing; maybe pile after 1st read but read for emotion; would need to take the context of entire anthology into account to see if it could fit.
    • Editor 5: Not up on Arthurian legend; still liked it without recognizing references.
    • Buying editor: Agrees with Editor 3; minored in Arthurian legend; no because dragon could have been a mages and the story still could have worked; needs to be more fleshed out.

    Post-mortem:

    I was not surprised to hear that the writing felt rushed (it was) or that it didn’t have enough emotion. These deadlines were just brutal. I came in under 5000 words and had a 6000-word limit and should’ve pushed up against that limit and given it another pass. I should’ve written a clearer ending.

    Emotion in fiction:

    One of the things I’m reluctant to write about is the definition of what passes for “emotion.” There seems to be a preference for characters who are overly dramatic, who are damaged and traumatized on a deep level (preferably on multiple levels). There is almost no recognition of the fact that some people just get over it and move on (or aren’t overly emotional in the first place). Emotion is, after all, a spectrum. But if you’re going to require that the story NOT have a human disguised as a dragon/alien/monster, then it does beg the question, wouldn’t the emotions of the non-human be NOT human or at least different than ones you’d expect from a human character?

    I think this is why aliens (or any other non-human creature) whether anthropomorphized or not, really is just human, with one exaggerated attribute. The best analogy I can think of is Star Trek. Exaggerate logic in a human and you have a Vulcan. Exaggerate aggression in a human and you have a Klingon. At the end of the day, whether the Hollywood prosthetics come off or not, we relate to a disguised human trait.

    Would an alien based on broccoli be anywhere within the realm of our experience?

    This is a separate issue from emotional impact to the reader.

    The lack of character emotion was discussed in the context of some military stories, bringing up the same question: are military people so used to dealing with traumatic things that they don’t react emotionally? I think the answer is “yes” in some cases. In real life, people distance themselves and build up emotional callouses in order to be able to function. But in fiction, the preference seems to be for people who don’t do that, even when the story context calls for it, as in a military piece. I suspect that some editors get that and the standard for a military-themed anthology might be different.

    Yes, genre matters. A lot.

    Part Six