2019 at Turtleduck Press

Happy 2020, faithful blog readers! Here’s hoping you’ve had some time off (check), are feeling rested (well, I was until I finally caught the death!cold that’s been going around, and I still can’t sleep a full night without coughing), and are heading into the new year with at least a tiny bit of optimism (check). We’ve had a busy year here at Turtleduck Press writing stuff for your enjoyment… We returned to the world of our fantasy novel City of Hope and Ruin with an anthology called Love Shines Through, featuring romance stories from not just Kit and me (the authors of the original novel) but also KD and Erin, who kept asking us hard questions about the world that they needed answers to in order to write their stories. (Note to self: next time, write a story bible or a wiki while you’re writing the novel. It’s much easier than doing it after the fact, when you’ve forgotten all the details.) The four stories have a wide variety of pairings, because that’s how we roll: two queer (F/F and M/non-binary) and two straight (M/F). Our full-length novel release for the year was by KD Sarge, a lighthearted fantasy adventure called Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate, featuring a runaway elf named Flame, a party of adventurers on a quest for untold riches, a priest who won’t tell them where they’re going or why, and one very annoying ex-betrothed. (Free sample.) We’ve also been putting out free fantasy serials:…

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2018 at Turtleduck Press

Congratulations, you have survived another trip around the sun! Happy 2019 to all of you fine readers. We know 2018 was a bit of a dumpster fire for many; here’s hoping that this year is kinder. But the publishing industry doesn’t brake for dumpster fires — if anything, making art becomes even more important in difficult times. So making art is what we’ve been doing… 2018 was the Year of the Sequel at Turtleduck Press. We released two fantasy novels: In the Forests of the Night (Seize the Fire Book 2) — an M/M fantasy adventure series by KD Sarge (get Book 1 here) Fireborn (Reaper Girl Chronicles, Episode 2) — a straight paranormal fantasy series by Erin Zarro (Episode 1 can be found in our anthology Under Her Protection: Stories of Women to the Rescue) We’ve also been busy putting out free short stories every month. We have several fantasy serials going right now — “Sun Touched” by Erin Zarro, “Coat of Scarlet” by Siri Paulson (me), and “Curiosity Killed the Cat” by KD Sarge, mixed in with standalone stories by both Kit Campbell and Siri Paulson. If you missed them, you can find them all (plus excerpts from our novels) on our Freebies page. Look for another installment of “Coat of Scarlet” in February! And you can find out what all four of our authors are up to over here on our weekly blog. What does 2019 hold for us at TDP? More free short stories and blog…

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Looking Back

The other day, I made a list of all the stories I’ve written for Turtleduck Press. The purpose of the exercise was to have a handy reference to use for possible reprints (reselling the stories to other markets). But along the way, I got to reread some of them and remind myself what I’d done… Assuming I haven’t missed anything, I’m up to 18 (!) stories published through TDP. (Some of them are in our anthologies, others are freebies, and we decided to take the oldest ones down.) Yeah, that’s a lot…even I was surprised! But the math adds up. We’ve been publishing short stories since January 2011, and I’ve published 2-4 stories here every year since. (Okay, the math doesn’t quite add up. There was the serial that spanned a year, and now I’m embarking on another….) They’re all lengths, from under 1000 words up to 10,000, and all genres, secondary-world fantasy and Gothic and post-apocalyptic and steampunk and even poetry. Doing our anthologies has taught me how to write in the 7,000 – 10,000 word range (technically known as novelettes). Lacking inspiration with deadlines looming has taught me how to write very short, but still complete, stories. 😉 Oddly enough, I haven’t done much in the traditional short story length, 2000 – 5000 words, for a while. (Less oddly, I haven’t yet sold any stories in that mid-range length to markets outside of TDP, either.) Rereading my old stories has made me realize that I write with a…

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Coming Home

This week, I am home. Sort of. I grew up in a largish but sleepy city on the Canadian prairies. Suburbs, car culture, indoor shopping malls, long cold winters with plenty of snow and sunshine, lots of festivals and a tight-knit arts scene, large university. But for the last 12 years I’ve lived in Toronto – one of the three biggest cities in Canada (Vancouver and Montreal are the others). I remember being amazed by the number of pedestrians when I first moved there. You don’t nod and smile as you pass, you avert your eyes, because there are just too many people for it to make sense to nod and smile at everyone. The sheer number of restaurants, of full subway cars and buses, that Toronto can support still astounds me. And the diversity — half of all Torontonians were born outside Canada. It’s hectic and vibrant and wonderful. When I come back to the place where I grew up, it feels like home and not home. Familiar and strange – and stranger every time. The infrastructure is always changing – big box stores and suburbs continue to sprout up, and other businesses I remember have closed. There’s now an LRT (surface-level rapid transit) running down the nearest major artery to the house where I grew up. The streets look wider than I remember, even though they mostly aren’t. The downtown core doesn’t shut down at 6 PM anymore — people actually live there now, and the whole vibe…

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Diana Prince and the Thirteenth Doctor

If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you will probably have heard by now that the Thirteenth Doctor will be played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker (British, of course). You may also have Opinions about this. Well, so do I. But first I need to tell you a story… I didn’t grow up reading Marvel or DC comics, but I do enjoy superhero movies, and this decade has had lots of them to enjoy. I loved parts of the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale Batman trilogy. I particularly loved Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. And at first I was quite excited about the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), especially once Joss Whedon got on board. But…who are the women in these movies? The love interests. The sexed-up Russian super-spies (come on, I like Natasha, but she’s clearly written and dressed for the male gaze). The dead mothers. The side characters. Look, I have no problem identifying with male leads (see above), but I was really feeling the lack. (Though The Force Awakens and Rogue One helped. I tried Supergirl, too, but the tone of the series isn’t quite my thing.) I was drifting away from the superheroes, back to books, where I knew I could find as many female leads as I needed. Then came Wonder Woman. And the tone was pitch-perfect all the way through. The filmmakers took her seriously, as a character and as a woman. They put her in armour and that’s when I knew…this movie wasn’t about the male gaze. It was…

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Half-Baked Opinions on the 2017 Hugo Award Nominees

Hey, guess what? The Hugo nominees are out! The what, you say? The Hugo Awards are one of the most prestigious awards for science fiction and fantasy authors. They’re voted on yearly by several thousand people–not industry insiders, exactly, but a mix of professionals and fans who have bought memberships to a Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention). That means they can be, and have been, hijacked by small groups acting in bad faith. There’s lots more background–google “Hugo Awards controversy”–but I won’t dwell on it here. As an author and fan, what do I think of the nominations? Here’s where I admit that my reading is too far behind for me to have an informed opinion. I usually read one or more of the nominated novels…but not until a year, or several years, later. That won’t stop me from having an uninformed opinion on a couple of the categories, though (and I’d love to hear yours!)… Of the Best Novel nominees, it’s interesting that 3 out of 6 are later books in series–I wonder how that will affect their chances. I’ve read one of the earlier books in those series (The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu), which blew me away. (I wasn’t the only one: it won the Hugo two years ago.) They’re also a good mix of subgenres: the Liu novel, Death’s End, is hard SF; Anders pits magic and science against each other; Chambers is writing small-band-of-misfits space opera; Lee’s novel is a very different sort of space…

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The Smallest of All Steps

Happy New Year, friends! I think the world in general has had quite enough of 2016. Here’s hoping for better things in 2017. On a personal writerly level, I had a very mixed year. I released my first published novel (co-authored with Kit), which was amazing, and then dove into a months-long promotional campaign for it, which was interesting and educational and sometimes fun, but not so amazing. (Except the two book launches. Those were pretty neat.) One of my co-workers at the day job bought my book recently, and today she walked past and waved it at me with a bookmark in it. That was also pretty neat. But the promo campaign has been over for months, and I’ve written almost nothing since. You may or may not be a writer, but I’m sure you know this about habits: if you let them drop, the longer you’ve been away from them, the harder it is to pick them up again. They start to feel big and scary and insurmountable. I’ve fallen into that trap before. For months. And writer who are not writing? Not the most pleasant people to be around, let me tell you. For starters, they tend to mope around and complain of existential angst, while their family members (and sometimes, the writers themselves) wonder why they can’t be content with normal diversions and enjoyable things like regular people, or alternatively, how it can be so hard to make stuff up with one’s brain. *ahem* But 2017…

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Mental Health for the Holidays

I think November’s been tough on a lot of us, and December isn’t necessarily any easier. Personally, besides the obvious stressors, I’ve also had a truly hectic month at work and came down with two colds in quick succession. Seems like a good time to review self-care. So here are some reminders, for myself as much as for you all… 1. Take the time to do something you love. I was lucky enough to attend not one but two contra (folk dance) weekends away from home in November. Lots of exercise, friends, wonderful live music, the state of flow, and a natural high, not to mention the excitement of a road trip. (Of course, that’s probably also where I picked up both of those colds. Argh.) 2. Do something creative. If you’re a creative professional (like a writer), do something else creative. I’m a big believer in “creative cross-training”. We writers love to talk craft and work on improving our craft, which is important. But it’s also important to go and try something else — something that doesn’t have the same stakes and expectations attached. For me right now, it’s Instagram, contra dance, and occasionally tinkering in the kitchen. 3. Try something new. At one of the aforementioned dance weekends, I got to try English Country Dancing (a cousin to contra) and swing dance, both new to me (swing dancing has footwork, ack, but the music is so much fun…). At the other, I got to try dancing the “gent’s”…

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The Makings of a Princess Story

Hello, Turtleducklings! Today I am super excited because I get to unveil… … … … … … … … THIS!   What is it, you ask? It’s our next release, an anthology of longish short stories by three Turtleduck Press authors, plus a sneak peek at our next novel. (Never fear, KD Sarge—our fourth author—hasn’t gone anywhere. Look for her next piece right here on December 1!) And yes, each story features outer space. And at least one princess. To be honest, I had a lot of trouble with mine. I didn’t want to go the route of Star Wars, with a grand space opera, since I only had the length of a novelette to work with. Next I ran through some classic Star Trek rip-off ideas and abandoned those as well. But then what? How to reasonably put a princess in a space setting and give her an adventure…oh yes, and a romance? Luckily, I already had a space setting—the steampunk ‘verse featured in The Haunting of Heatherbrae Station. It’s based on an alternate nineteenth century where a powerful source of energy, called ether, enabled humans to invent space travel more than a century early. Lots of fun…but I still wasn’t sure how to use it this time around. The real nineteenth century was a rich time, full of new inventions that made people feel they were living in an era of change and modernity. And it was also a time of social change—for example, numerous countries in Europe…

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Mental Health Breaks and Mini-Staycations

Have you ever come back from a vacation and immediately felt like you needed another one? Or has it been a while since you’ve had one? If you’re anything like me, you fall into habit during your non-vacationing life. Maybe you have a favourite coffee shop, or a park or a restaurant you love. Returning over and over again to places you enjoy is comforting, for sure. I do it a lot. But don’t underestimate the power of novelty for R&R. Last weekend was my wedding anniversary. We took the opportunity to go on a mini-staycation, just the two of us. It was a lot of fun, and it wasn’t particularly expensive. We had dinner at a new-to-us steakhouse chain, went home instead of staying at a hotel, then the next morning, ventured into a trendy neighbourhood we don’t usually frequent, and wandered down the street and picked a restaurant for brunch at random (why yes, we are slightly addicted to Yelp, why do you ask?). Good choice, too – they had delicious house-smoked bacon! That particular street was full of fancy/trendy furniture stores, so we poked around a few and drooled at all the gorgeous reclaimed wood and designer tables. We’re not even in the market for new furniture, and a lot of what we saw wouldn’t fit in our tiny rooms anyway (giant harvest table? uh, no), but window-shopping was fun! On our way back we picked up some bright yellow potted chrysanthemums to decorate our front steps…

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