Posts made in December, 2011

• Member News: December 31st, 2011

  Member News

  This here marks the final update for the original crew. Here’s to a wonderful year and promising future for the Night Bazaar!

  The “Best Of 2011″ are rolling in, and we’ve had a number of showings from our members:

  Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey made Fantasy Literature’s Best Books of the Year for 2011, Barnes and Noble’s Best Fantasy Releases of 2011, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2011.

  Courtney Schafer’s The Whitefire Crossing made Bibliotropic’s Best Books Discovered in 2011, Sneaky Burrito’s Best Books Read in 2011, Only the Best’s Best of 2011, Edis Book Lighthouse’s 2011 in Books, Adventure Fantastic’s Four Publisher’s You Should Be Reading, and was mentioned as a notable debut in Barnes and Noble’s Best Fantasy Releases of 2011.

  John Hornor Jacobs‘ Southern Gods made Fantasy Literature’s Best Books of the Year for 2011,

  Thomas Roche’s The Panama Laugh was listed in Paul Goat Allen’s Best Apocolyptic Fiction of 2011.

  Martha Wells’ The Cloud Roads made the Book Smuggler’s Most Excellent Books of 2011.

  Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo made Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist’s Year End Awards in three ways: in addition to being listed in the Top 10 Speculative Fiction Titles of 2011, The Winds of Khalakovo won Debut of the Year Hottie, and Brad won the Best New Voice award! Winds also made Mad Hatter Reviews’ Best of 2011 List, Ranting Dragon’s Top Ten Debuts of 2011, and received notable mentions in LEC Reviews’ Best of 2011 List and A Staffer’s Musing’s Best SFF Debuts of 2011. Winds was also listed in Sneaky Burrito’s Best Books Read in 2011 and Adventure Fantastic’s Four Publisher’s You Should Be Reading

  This past week, Brad also released Strata, a novella co-written with Stephen Gaskell. Strata is a high-tech thriller set aboard a vast mining platform in the sun’s chromosphere. Combining the gritty futurism of Bladerunner, the racing thrills of Tron, and the sensawunda of Robert Charles Wilson’s novels, Strata is ideal for SF fans who love big canvas, action-packed works.

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• And now for the next thing!

  The Year Ahead

  Oh crap, it’s over!  Much as I enjoyed this year, I’m looking forward to next year as it looks to be just bust-a-gut full of good times.   For example, I think I may be able to pay off my mortgage next year.  That’s the kind of wild and crazy lady I am.  Might even make a few extra payments on my student loans!  Hoo boy, you never know what I’ll do next!  But seriously, here’s a quick look at my plans:

  • Next year, I plan to take over the world using an elite cadre of invisible war elephants and spoons.  The really shiny kind.  They’ll never see it coming.  (Because I’ll get lazy halfway through the year and not bother. )
  • More probably, I’ll be doing stuff for the release of my next science fiction novel coming out with Night Shade Books in the fall of 2012.  It is currently titled Spin The Sky but I’m thinking about changing that to The Trojan Spaceship as I am knee-deep in rewrites just now.
  • After rewriting, re-editing, getting tons of critiques and then re-writing and re-editing a few more times, I may be on my last major re-tool of this YA science fiction I’ve been tinkering with for the past two years.  I’m keen to release it as a indie e-book, but I get a huge lecture every time I say that, so I will be a good author and query around for it.  If that doesn’t pan out, though, I am totally going the independent publish route.  All the cool kids are doing it.
  • I need to finish up this adult science fiction I’m about halfway through.  I keep avoiding it because I have performance anxiety about writing sex scenes and this thing is going to have some of those if I have to duct-tape myself to a chair to type them out.
  • I really feel like having Night Bazaar as a weekly online writing project has been beneficial for many reasons, so I’ve invented a writing project for myself for next year. My goal is to write some journalist-type news articles about whatever the heck I’m doing twice a month to get some practice with that style of writing.  I may try to shop them out to online news sources or I may be lazy and just post them on my website: www.katystauber.com.  This weekend I’ll be finishing up my article about my erotic book club.
  • I’m already signed up for sailing lessons in order to fulfill my recurring fantasy in a mature fashion.  I dream of sailing off the end of the world to see what’s on the other side.

  It’s been fun guys!  May your next year be splendiferously full of chocolate and orgasms (or whatever really makes your day).

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• Good Night, Mrs. Calabash, Wherever You Are

  The Year Ahead

  

  This is my final column for The Night Bazaar. The blog was conceived as a way to promote writers who had books coming out from Night Shade in 2011, and next year it’ll be promoting writers who have books coming out from Night Shade in 2012, so that puts me on the night train to the big adios, suckers.

  Thanks to Courtney for getting this blog up and running — it’s been a blast. And it’s been a pleasure to blog with talents like Bradley, Kameron, John, Stina, Katy, and Martha, not to mention our brilliant parade of guest bloggers.

  I haven’t got the foggiest idea what the new year will hold for me, writing-wise, since the novels I’m currently working on are not yet sold. I hope to work with Night Shade again, but not every book works for every publisher, and it really isn’t anything personal. So in the meantime, here’s where you can find me in the year to come.

  You can visit my personal site at Thomasroche.com.

  You can find ebook editions of my other zombie/paranormal stories on Amazon, here, here, here, here, and here, or read my 1997 dark erotica collection Dark Matter now back in ebook form from Renaissance eBooks.

  You can find me weekly blogging about science, technology and the paranormal at Techyum.com.

  You can find me blogging about sex, science and politics at TinyNibbles.com.

  If you’re in San Francisco or its environs, you can take the 60-hour training for sex educators that I teach twice a year with San Francisco Sex Information. This is a sex-positive, life-changing, life-affirming class that aims for a descriptive, rather than a proscriptive, approach. It provides concrete information for teachers, writers, psychotherapists, social workers, doctors, nurses, ministers, reproductive counselors, and anyone else who provides her or his clients with descriptive information about sexuality.

  You can find me blogging every month or so about writing erotica at WriteSex.net.

  You can read my hard-boiled crime blog at Boiled Hard.

  You can add me on Good Reads, Twitter, Facebook, Twitpic, and Flickr, if you’re into that sort of thing. You can check out my Amazon Author Page.

  You can also add me on Tumblr, if you’re one of those people.

  You can also add The Panama Laugh on Facebook and Twitter.

  And if you enjoyed The Panama Laugh and want to see a sequel, you can visit PanamaLaugh.com for updates.

  Of course you can always just drop me a line, which is cool, too. Hopefully you’ll be seeing lots more of me on the bookshelves, virtual or otherwise. But whatever the future brings, it’s been hella fun blogging here. Thanks for listening.

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• Dasvidaniya

  The Year Ahead

  So here we are. A full year since starting up this here blog.

  Despite the theme of our posts this week, my urge is to look back over the past twelve months and talk about what the blog has meant to me and the changes I’ve gone through as a writer and as a person. I know we did that last week, but I’m having an attack of nostalgia. Can you blame me?

  This isn’t to say that there aren’t things I’m looking forward to, though. I’m looking forward to quite a bit, actually. First, I’m itching to get The Straits of Galahesh out on the streets. It’s not quite the same aching desire that came from waiting for Winds to debut. Winds was my first book, and I had nothing to “hold me over,” as it were, and so it became this fingernail-gnawing delay where every day seemed longer than the one before. This year, there are still a lot of things to do to promote Winds so that it continues to find attention. So I’m alright with the wait for Straits. It’ll come.

  I’m looking forward to the release of Book 2 in another way as well. I think I’m going to feel like a grown-up writer when it happens. Perhaps not mature, mind you, but certainly no neophyte either. It feels as though once might have been a fluke. There are plenty of books and trilogies and series that never carry the author into a larger career. In many ways, there’s not a lot I can do about that—this is a very competitive business—but I’ll do what little I can and hope that word continues to spread and I can continue to share the stories I’ve grown to love writing. (more…)

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• Fairytale of New York… er… Book

  The Year Ahead

  It’s been quite a year — a really, really good one too, and I’m so thankful that it all went as well as it did. What’s next for me? First, the next book in the Fey and the Fallen series: And Blue Skies from Pain will be released in March of 2012. (So, I’m afraid y’all are stuck with me for a few more months yet, only on Thursdays instead of Tuesdays.) And I’m working on another novel — because if there’s one rule of being a writer it’s: WRITE THE NEXT ONE. All in all, this is what I love doing more than anything in my life, and I know just how lucky I am that I’ve been able to sell one, let alone two novels so far. So, hurray for doing what you love and having the opportunity to make even a little money at it! May everyone be so lucky. Because wouldn’t the world be a different place if everyone was doing whatever it was they most had a passion for? Sure, it’s scary sometimes, and it’s hard work, but it beats the hell out of never having tried.

  What else? I need to get back into shape for fencing again. It’s time to pick up a blade — or in my case, sometimes two. It keeps my mind sharp, and I miss it a lot. If possible, I want to travel some more as well. I’d dearly love to make it to Ireland next year. (We’ll see.) But, hey, I’ll settle for just making it to WFC and Norwescon again. I plan on a trip down to Galveston and the Elissa too. (I’ve always had a thing for Tall Ships.) And then there’s my gi-normous pile of To Be Read books. I really have to make more headway before I bring home another novel. The new books I want to read are too numerous to name, but I’ll definitely say that David Coe’s next novel is one I can’t wait to read. Here’s hoping I learn to read faster. I’ve also a number of films I want to catch up on too. (Can you believe I’ve only just seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes? And me an Apes fan since I was a kid.) I suspect I need to learn to manage my time better. (I seriously don’t know how Courtney does it all.)

  Anyway, may 2012 be a great year for you and yours.

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• Closing Time

  The Year Ahead

  2011 is coming to a close, and it’s time for me and the other excellent Night Bazaar denizens to shuffle (or bounce) out the exit and leave the stage to a new chorus of voices.  It’s been a wild, wonderful, crazy year, and as I said in last week’s post, I’m eternally grateful to the gang here at the Bazaar for making my experience of first publication that much more fun (and helping to keep me sane).

  So what’s ahead for me in 2012?  First off, there’s the biggie: finishing The Tainted City.  Right now the novel is scheduled for publication in October, which means my deadline is Real Soon Now (pant, pant, augh!).  Some days I think my brain will explode (especially if my son outgrows the need for a nap, which oh god, I pray he does not do until this book is done…).  But for all the stress involved in balancing parenthood, writing, and day job,  I remain ridiculously excited about the story.  I hope those of you who enjoyed Whitefire will enjoy Tainted City just as much!  (Click here to read a descriptive blurb – though only if you’ve already read Whitefire, since the blurb is slightly spoilerific for Whitefire otherwise.)

  What’s next after The Tainted City?  Before I type another word I’m gonna dive headfirst into my TBR pile.  So many good books I’m dying to read, and haven’t yet!  I remember after I finished my big revision of Whitefire, I read something like 2o books in two weeks – and wow, I felt so wonderfully recharged and itching to get back to work on my own story afterward.  (Other non-writing goals for 2012: climb at least one new peak over 14,000 feet, take my son to hike a nice easy Utah slot canyon like Little Wild Horse, ski the fall line of the infamous Spiral Stairs mogul run at Telluride without stopping or falling, and return to competition in figure skating.) (more…)

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• Member News: December 24, 2011

  Member News

  Courtney Schafer‘s novel The Whitefire Crossing got three great reviews this week (nothing like reading a book with snow on the cover right before Christmas! ).  First, Bastard of Bastard Books reviewed Whitefire on Only the Best Scifi, calling it a “very promising debut which I highly recommend.”  Seak of Only the Best Scifi reviewed the novel on Bastard Books, saying “I really enjoyed myself with this one.”  The third review is from Chris Hawks of SMZb, who says, “This is a really good book.”

  Courtney was interviewed by Greg Wilson and Brad Beaulieu on Speculate! The Podcast for Readers, Writers, and Fans – click here to listen .

  Katy Stauber‘s novel Revolution World is #6 on B&N Book Club’s Best SciFi Releases of 2011 – congrats, Katy!

  Stina Leicht‘s forthcoming novel And Blue Skies From Pain was featured over on A Dribble of Ink – go check out the gorgeous cover!

  Martha Wells‘s new novel The Serpent Sea is now shipping from Amazon, and has started showing up in bookstores – run go get your copy!

  Only one more week left of the Night Bazaar in its current form!  But fear not, the blog’s not going anywhere – coming in 2012, a new slate of Night Shade authors will be taking the stage.

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• 5 Things I Learned About How to Be a Better Writer in 2011

  The Year in Review

  
  It’s the end of 2011, and it’s been a bloody busy year for me.

  I had two books come out this year, signed a contract for a third, switched day jobs, experienced some medical madness, fought hard to get back into some semblance of fitness, and am just about done with a draft of aforementioned third book.

  Along the way, I learned some things about the skills I needed to be a better writer – both on the business side of things and the personal side of things.

   1)      I need to learn to write faster. Maybe some of this is knowing the demands of the marketplace. Maybe some of it is just being very aware of my health, and how it may be that I have a few years less to knock out books than maybe some other people do. Whatever the reason, I need to stop being happy to squeeze out 200 or 500 words a day and start actually… writing books like a professional. That means no longer pecking at the keys like this is a fun hobby, but sitting down, planning out my scenes, and knocking them out like a professional, the same way I do at my day job. Fiction writing may be more fun, but that’s no excuse to treat it like an idle pastime. I treat my night-job writing a lot more seriously now, and the simple act of planning  a scene before I open my manuscript has worked wonders.

  2)      I need to stop making excuses. I had all sorts of excuses this year for being tired and cranky and not writing enough. I had a couple surgeries. I switched day jobs. I had two books come out back-to-back (trust me, six months apart feels like thirty days in writer time).  I read too many reviews.  But at the end of the day, the world doesn’t care about your excuses. It cares about results. You only have so much life, and the clock is ticking.  As with fitness, writing is something you need to build into your schedule according to what your deadlines/goals are. You should build everything around the work, instead of trying to shoehorn it in.

  3)      Some fights are worth fighting. Every time I got a draft cover from my publisher, my whole body tensed up and my stomach sank. I hate conflict, believe it or not. I hate being “a problem.” But I also know that if something is important to me, I need to say so, even if it’s uncomfortable or difficult. I worked with my publisher and the cover artist until we got the covers right, even though some of the discussions left me sleepless and anxious.  As writers, we’re responsible for the images we put onto the page, and if your publisher values your opinion at all, it’s also your responsibility to do what you can to ensure your cover is right. Luckily, I had a great publisher and a fantastic cover artist, and in the end, it all turned out great.

  4)      Negotiation will get you everywhere.  I had a girlfriend once who taught business negotiations to MBA students. Living with her for four years, I was privy to a lot of discussions about how to negotiate for things that you wanted.  I learned about BATNA, but most importantly, I learned that women were far less likely to negotiate than men were – whether it be the price of a car or a job offer or a book contract. There are all sorts of reasons for this, and I know that for me, much of that had to do with aforementioned aversion to conflict. You’re supposed to be happy and thankful to get anything for your work. But when you look at the numbers, and how a mere 2% negotiation in your pay rate can add up over time, you have to realize that nobody is just going to give that to you. You have to ask for it. And, if necessary, fight for it. Even if you can only ask for 2% or even 10% – do it. A job offer, or a book offer, is just that – an offer. Figure out what you want/need, talk it over with your spouse or agent as the case may be, and just bloody ask for it.  Generally, this gets easier the more you do it.

  5)      Write what you love – because nobody else is going to. This is actually a really important thing to hang onto in the “everybody needs to write YA vampire fiction to be successful” age. I read a lot of “reviews” from people who either couldn’t make sense of my books at all or who just despised anything dark and morally ambiguous with a lot of violence and swear words. These were not my target readers. But when I started writing my blog back in 2004, originally titled Brutal Women, I found a whole lot of other people like me. Women who wanted to be strong – who *were* strong – physically and emotionally. Who liked morally ambiguous fiction.  Who were tired of Urban Fantasy that was 90% romance and 10% action, with the usual pat plot formulas. I knew these folks were out there. I just needed to find them. If you think these books are a love letter just for you – I can tell you that yes, they are. I wanted the same kind of books, and because I didn’t find them on the shelves, I went and wrote them myself. There are other people like you out there. They will love what you write. Have some confidence in your story, and your own unique voice. At the end of the day, anybody can write any knockoff of anything. There’s no shame in it – money is money, afterall – but you’re far more likely to get attention writing something only you can write than writing something anybody could write.  

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• Hellhound On My Trail

  The Year in Review

  This week’s topic is  ”What was the year like for you as a writer.” Such a topic is dangerous for me. It encourages me to navel-gaze, something I’m far too good at. So, honoring the mood of the season, I’ll try to keep it moderately brief, and hopefully maudlin as hell.

  2011 was the third year I’ve lived without a day job (though the first year, 2009, was a partial one). I like it. I’ve also loved my day jobs, but there’s something exceedingly “special” — in both its ironic and non-ironic senses — about being able to focus totally on reading and writing.

  And when I say reading and writing, that’s what I mean. Reading is the side of the writing life that I never thought I’d like so much, and for me, it has to be a daily occurrence, or I lose a sense of what I’m here for.

  In 2011, Night Shade Books published my first novel under my own name, The Panama Laugh. One of the prompts for this week’s topic is “How have things changed for you pre- and post-publication,” and the answer is that it hasn’t changed that much. It’s delightful to get paid for a piece of work you love, and it’s indescribably wonderful to have people enjoy it. But even so, what I look forward to most is writing the next page.

  Too many other things have changed in the world for me to generalize what 2011 was like for me personally. Too many personal things were weird and wonky, to the point of disaster, this past year, for me to give a damn about any of this writing crap. I like doing it. I’ve always liked doing it. That said, it is a pain in the ass, and most days I’d rather swallow hot coals than put words on the page.

  I do it because I don’t know any better. I do it because I’m incapable of taking logical steps to better my life. I do it because I’m stubborn as hell. I do it because I love the human race, and if I tried to express it any other way, I’d explode. I do it because I hate the human race, and if I tried to express it any other way, they’d (rightly) throw me in jail.

  I do it because I probably occupy some kind of space on the autism spectrum, and writing half-completed action novels is one of my tics. I do it because, look, here’s another year drizzled by, I’m almost dead, and I don’t have any sense of what that means. I’ve got a hellhound on my trail; I always have, and those of you who don’t, or think you don’t…well, no offense, but I just don’t understand you. That’s okay, though…you probably don’t understand me, either, so it’s cool.

  People who live unhaunted are different than me in some essential way. I’m not sure if I envy them or resent them, but I know I’d rather be them than me. Nobody asked, though, so here I am.

  Writing and reading are the only activities that help me be OK with that.

  There you go: maudlin navelgazing for Christmas. Hope your 2011 was as splendid as mine.

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• Losing My Religion

  The Year in Review

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

  Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  English novelist (1812 – 1870)

  I found that being a debut author was much like losing my virginity, my first real work day at my first real job, or  my wedding day.  It was much like Christmas  – lots of hype, kinda schticky, and at the end I can’t decide if I really enjoyed the experience or I am just so glad it is OVER.

  It’s cool.  I’m American.  We dig schtick here.  We do ‘over-rated.’  We are so goddamn bored, we’ll try to enjoy pretty much anything.  Otherwise, every day is just another day.  I’ve had 12, 742 days so far and, I’ll be honest, even the standout days are starting to run together a bit, you know?

  Sure, I remember my wedding.  What was I thinking with that green dress and, Jesus, how was I so fat and wasn’t my guy just the handsomest ever?  I remember the days my kids were born.  Bit of a gore-fest there and how often am I screaming naked bleeding in a room full of people?  Can’t forget those days if I tried.  Really, if there’s one thing experience has taught me is that, on momentous occasions, I tend to remember what I was wearing.  Neurologically, that’s interested, sure.  But….

  It’s really just fine.  Sure, I was a tad bit disappointed to discover that fame and fortune are, in fact, not a normal part of the published author gig.  I was slightly disheartened to find that I would never be able to quit my day job and write full time.  That’s life, though, isn’t it?  That’s the deal.   I will say that I feel this part of my life is that weird draggy ending bit to the second book of a trilogy.  Sometime soon though, I plan to shock the peanut gallery with a totally killer sequel.  Not just the climactic ending to a trilogy but in fact the open-ended third book in a long running series.  It’s totally going to be epic.

  OK, bored with attempting the angsty introspective nerd girl perspective there.   If this were a piece of fiction, I’d be writing about robots attacking right now.  Space ninjas.  Killer mutant sheep.  Anything more interesting than this suburban American pathos.  If I learned anything from this year it is that I think I’m done with writing YA.  I spent a year trying to remember how I felt and thought as a teen and… Screw that.  It was a train wreck back there and if I could fry out every single synapse that remembered those days, I’d do it.    The future.  That’s where I live.  I’m writing about sexy old people from here on out.

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