New Story in Escape Pod

Last April, Mur Lafferty was the subject of a fan-driven firestorm around at Escape Pod. The prevalence of lesbians in her magazine was raising a few eyebrows among both people who don’t like lesbians and people who wanted to see more gay men. As is the case with Internet controversies, the point at issue was more or less just an excuse for a good old-fashioned flame war, and in a frustration-inspired bid at surrealism Mur posted to twitter something along the lines of “Escape Pod is now soliciting stories containing gay men, soup cans, and singularities.”

I ask you, how could I pass up a challenge like that? I sent back to her “You’ll have it next week.” Not only did she have it next week, but she liked it, and she bought it. The result is this week’s Escape Pod episode, Chicken Noodle Gravity.

Read by Paul Haring, Chicken Noodle Gravity is the second of The Lombard Alchemist Tales, a series of short stories I kicked off earlier this year with At The Edge of Nowhere. The Lombard Alchemist Tales are stories of mystery, and darkness, and wonder. At the borders of society, around the next quarter, lurking in the shadows, all around us are dark and comic stories fit to unmake our darkest dreams. My job? Find them, bring them to you, and let you figure out how to survive them. Centered around a spooky pawn shop run by a devilish shopkeeper in a broken-down gambling boomtown where some people go there for salvation, some for curiosity, and some to scrape up a little bit of money to buy a few more cans of soup. And sometimes, they get more than they bargain for.

So, with that said, I hope you enjoy Chicken Noodle Gravity. Stay tuned for more fun news coming to this space in the days leading up to Christmas.

Buried Alive in an Ebook

Buried Alive In The Blues, the apocalyptic fantasy I wrote for Philippa Ballantine’s Erotica A La Carte, is now available as a standalone ebook from all your favorite venues.

The end isn’t near, it’s here.
Irene, recently widowed, knows the Earth is drowning, and all she wants is one last night to dance. The best band in the world is playing just up the road in a blues club at the edge of what little land remains, and there she encounters a stranger, and a clue that might unlock the mystery of her husband’s death.
This is the way the world ends: not with a whimper, but with the blues.

The story is now available from Amazon, from Barnes & Noble, and from Smashwords.

This title is intended for adult audiences.

—Story Sample Below the Cut—
Continue reading ‘Buried Alive in an Ebook’

“Apocalypse Sex” Now Available

[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]B003QP4F0W[/amazon-product] Circlet Press’s new anthology, Apocalypse Sex, is now available on Amazon and Smashwords. It contains a new and improved version my novelette Buried Alive In The Blues, which some of you may remember from its appearance on Erotica A La Carte last year. Now you can take it anywhere with you on your handy-dandy e-reader!

Don’t delay — read for yourself the story of the woman who loved the Blues so much that, when the world ended, it was the only thing she still wanted.

Me? I think I’m going to go celebrate. Where is that Leadbelly album?

The Great Ass-Moving Experiment

As a writer, like most writers, I have one giant terror point. For some people it’s the writing. For some people it’s showing your work to friends, or to strangers. For some people it’s marketing in general. For me, it’s marketing fiction to editors. I don’t have a problem with nonfiction (as my bibliography demonstrates), but when it comes to the giant black box world of terror there’s very little that can beat marketing fiction to New York.

It’s scared me since I was 12, when I read Writer’s Digest religiously at the library every day (which, in retrospect, was my first mistake). To my twelve year old mind, it described a world full of arcane rituals, secret handshakes, nepotism, and strange protocols – and a game at which nobody made a dime to boot.

Of course, I’ve learned better in the meantime, but the terror never quite went away. For years I’ve coped by doing other things I needed to do anyway in order to go pro – focusing on craft, learning to network at cons, podcasting and learning about how to interact with an audience, building my platform, and romancing the occasional agent, but I’ve hit the point in my career where I’ve got a hell of a backlist piling up (at least, for someone at my point in their career), and a handful of fiction sales that prove that my terror (which is largely born of the sense that I don’t understand a goddamn thing about the fiction publishing culture) is well past the point of being about 75% bullshit.
Continue reading ‘The Great Ass-Moving Experiment’

Minor Milestones

[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]189749209X[/amazon-product] These are the milestones which I know, from experience, will seem piddly small in retrospect, but for me at the moment they represent surmounting a ridgeline and seeing the valley beyond. The valley might be filled with swamps, marshes, and tangles under the trees, but from here it’s gorgeous.

I can’t sit here. There’s thousands of miles and hopefully countless vistas to hit before I run out of steam. Even today, I’ve got a few thousand words and a recording session to plow through. But waiting at my door this morning was my first ever author’s copy of a fiction publication – which somehow feels far different from authors copies for a non-fiction publication. Tonight, if I make my word count, I’m going to make up a shelf devoted just to my publications – seems like a good way to celebrate.

Thanks to all of you who read this blog, send feedback to the podcasts, buy LinuxJournal and the new anthology, and have stopped by to help me with a friendly kick upside the head in the last few years. It’s been glorious – and I daresay that after another fair amount of sweat and blood, it will be even more glorious.

The Pod Complex

[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]189749209X[/amazon-product]It may be a minor thing in retrospect, but today it’s tickling my socks off. My first fiction print sales are now available from Amazon. The Pod Complex is an anthology of the best stories from the podosphere in genres ranging from mystery to horror with all stops in between. My own stories Cold Duty, The Man In The Rain, and Angels Unawares feature, and they’re joined by other authors like Podfather Tee Morris, Dark Overlord Scott Sigler, Dead Robot Justin Macumber, Night Terror-inducer Phil Rossi, and a host of other creative folks like Jared Axelrod, Jack Mangan, Emerian Rich, J.D. Williams, and at least four others whose stories I haven’t read yet (but, judging by the general quality of the anthology, should be page-turners).

It’s a handsome trade paperback with pretty cover-art, and will sit handsomely on your bookshelf or coffee table. Hours of entertainment – and, in my case, new and improved versions of stories you love, now available to enjoy at your own pace instead of at mine.

Share and Enjoy!

Buried Alive in an Anthology

I am pleased to report that the story I originally wrote for Philippa Ballantine‘s podcast project Erotica a la Carte has just sold to Circlet Press, and will be included in their forthcoming anthology Apocalypse Sex.

Buried Alive In The Blues is the story of Irene, a widow who finds herself trapped by a months-long rainstorm that’s drowning the world, but she doesn’t care, because she’s got a pass to see the best blues band in the world play at an old speakeasy in the neighboring town. But when the bass starts thumping and the lights hit the stage, she realizes she may get more than she bargained for – but that’s okay, because the blues are worth it.

If you haven’t heard the story and would like to, you can find it here. Definitely not work safe, it contains explicit sexual situations and a heavy dollop of the blues, Buried Alive is a southern gothic romance that will keep you guessing right up to the end.

I’ll keep you all posted on publication dates for the anthology!