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Month: May 2018

Finding the Right Book

I’m a writer. That means, among other things, that I have a To-Be-Read pile almost high enough to put satellites into low Earth orbit. It also means that I want more books. Always. Immediately. But I do try to contain myself. After all, I do have shelves and shelves of books, and nowhere to put another shelf. There’s also the guilt currently associated with buying books. A Christmas or two (or three) ago, my awesome roomie hunted down the last books of the Wheel of Time series for me. She bought me every story in the Temeraire series. She bought me two seasons of Agents of Shield, and two or three of Stargate Atlantis, several movies I’d mentioned wanting, other books she thought I would like…and I haven’t read most of them. I haven’t watched hardly any. I should! I want to! I just…haven’t. And she knows, because she lives with me. When I consider buying books or movies, she makes little barbed comments. So I was in a bookstore last week, and feeling all of the above plus the extra guilt of being in a bookstore with the person who bought me a lot of my unread-as-yet books (as well as unwatched-as-yet movies) when that person reads about a book a day or more and she works full time just like I do, and also writes… But…bookstore! You can’t go to a bookstore and just not buy books. Well, maybe you can, but i have a hard time with…

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Filling Plot Holes For Fun (and Profit)

So, I’ve been doing edits on Fireborn, our August release. This book has had an interesting life. I wrote it in January 2015 as a sequel to Reaper Girl, the novelette that was published in the Under Her Protection anthology. It was 23,000 words, too short on plot, not enough murder (lol) and I set it aside to work on other things. Then last year, it was time to work on this year’s production schedule and I thought, hey, if I just expanded it, I could have a novel to publish in one of our empty slots. Never mind that I had about five months before the deadline (January 1st) and had hardly any ideas about what precisely I would expand it with. (I’m pretty sure my fellow TDPers thought I’d lost my mind, but I saw it as a challenge). I wrote like a madwoman for three or four months, then submitted it on time, no less, on January 1st. I was supposed to get editorial feedback on March 1st, but there were some delays, so I got it on April 1st, with a revised release date of August 1st. With me so far? In late April, I had a panic attack because I was sure my next deadline was May 1st and I was pretty sure I couldn’t finish on time (for health reasons) and emailed my people and asked for a two-week extension. I believed I could finish it by then. Ha, ha. Hahahahaahahahahaaha. Nope. (But, good news:…

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That Time of Year

Oh, friends, we all have times of the year that are busier than others, don’t we? Well, this is mine. May and June–yikes. It’s almost worse than the Christmas/New Year cusp (and might be worse in some ways). Spring doesn’t really get here til May, so all season-switching things have to be done–the sprinklers, the trees, planting of gardens, digging out the lawn mower, fixing any damage that winter hath wrought, etc. I have a dead pine tree in the backyard that’s half cut down (the yard guy’s chainsaw broke when he was here on Thursday, and I’ve yet to hear from him again), the dog has eaten a full three saplings (the dangers of puppies you didn’t know about), the mulch we bought for the garden is full of nails (!!!), and other sundries. (Just…don’t have a yard. It’s probably for the best.) (Also I hate rabbits and if they don’t stop eating my flax I am going into the holly bush after them, so help me.) Plus there’s the school stuff–one school year finishing up, so there’s end of year things like collecting friends’ contact info for potential summer get-togethers, getting teacher presents together (oops, deadline is tomorrow, so…), planning “school” birthdays for summer birthdays, finishing up volunteer commitments–and the next school year needing prep, like medical forms and immunizations being submitted, confirming intent to enroll, etc. (Also there’s the end of the year stir-crazies, which are horrible and makes me just want to put everyone outside forever, but then…

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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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Coat of Scarlet: A Clockpunk Tale, Part 1

by Siri Paulson Marius glanced up from the airshipman’s breeches he was mending as the front window of his shop darkened. Someone had passed close by and was now standing in the doorway, blocking the light. A tall, bulky someone. Marius bit back his annoyance. “Come in, good sir, and tell me what Marius the Tailor can do for you.” A deep voice rumbled, “I’m told you have the finest eye in town.” Marius stared at the long justacorps coat his visitor carried, dyed in the richest red Marius had ever seen, outside of royalty. He strode to the table where Marius was sitting near the window and dumped the coat on top of the trousers. “Can you mend this?” The coat was a fine velvet. He resisted the urge to stroke it. “Is this…cochineal dye?” “That’s not your concern. Can you do it or not?” Marius flipped the coat over. A long slash ran through the right front, cutting through intricate gold braid detailing that matched the wide cuffs and pockets. The frayed edges of the braid made his heart ache. But the velvet fabric had been cut cleanly. If he patched the lining together from the inside, mended the tear with his tiniest stitches, and then covered it over by matching the braided pattern on the left front… “Yes,” he said, and looked up. His customer wore an ivory brocade jacket, a beautifully cut white linen blouse, and a tricorn hat. The only thing that ruined the effect…

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