NEW RELEASE and STORY SALE: "We Suffered Such a Man as This" via Mystery Weekly Magazine

One of the short stories that I wrote in Japan, about an eccentric old west detective in Calaveras County, now has a home at MYSTERY WEEKLY MAGAZINE.

Here's the synopsis of "We Suffered Such a Man as This":

Arriving in the small mining town of Copperopolis in fall of 1899, Georges Armadale, self-proclaimed detective extraordinaire, has taken it upon himself to solve a murder recently committed in a local church. At the standard rate, of course.

As part of my ongoing fight to write more stories around or near the San Joaquin Valley in California, I decided to try my hand at detective fiction and set it in one of my favorite little towns in the foothills at the turn of the century. Copperopolis is a small town wrapped around Lake Tulloch with a long history of mining for, as one would imagine, copper. Much of what was mined during the 1860s was sent east to be smelted for ammunition during the Civil War.

Copperopolis is also located in Calaveras County, where Mark Twain spent much time working with family and friends during the Gold Rush. His time here inspired the story, published by Bret Harte, that would become his first real success: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" Nearby Angels Camp is, as the story goes, where the story's narrator first heard of this frog competition. And Jackass Hill, where Mark Twain spent his time working, can also be visited and plays host to an old replica of what his cabin would've looked like (and is old in its own right, despite being a replica).

Hope you'll consider checking out this month's issue for the story!

Mystery Weekly Magazine | Amazon

And I can also announce that I've sold another story! Can't get into details, but it's one that I really enjoyed writing. Will drop more details the closer we get to publication.

"The Haint of Sweetwater River" - Available in ALIEN ARTIFACTS by ZNB Publications

It's official! My weird western short story, "The Haint of Sweetwater River," has been selected for publication in ALIEN ARTIFACTS, a sci-fi anthology by the good folks at Zombies Need Brains.

They're aiming for an August release date and I believe it'll be available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you're interested in supporting the publisher right just now, you can preorder the limited edition Kickstarter version HERE.

Thanks again to ZNB for the opportunity! Recently read David Farland's weird western short, "Hellfire on the High Frontier" and loved it, so I'm pretty jazzed to have a story alongside his.

For the final Table of Contents, cover art, and synopsis of ALIEN ARTIFACTS, here's the Kickstarter update.

Blackguards and Other Such Things!

Been a long time! A little over four months, which is regrettable, but I have excuses. Here's what I've been up to lately.

1. School! - Feels like one of the busiest semesters so far. Sixteen units, which isn't so bad, but throw in a statistics class and I've been stressing to the max some days. I'm hoping to transfer to a university either this year or next year, so I want to get as many classes in as I can. Hoping by next semester I'll have more room to write consistently.

2. Revising City of Blades: I'm still giving my most recent novel a lot of attention, reading and rereading it as frequently as I can while my sister finishes up her semester. Fingers crossed that she'll have time to commit to a cover, but in the meantime I haven't been sitting on my hands.

One announcement: When I titled the book City of Blades, I swear to all of you that I did the research and ensure that there were no other novels by that name. As it happens, now there are two. One by Robert Jackson Bennett (author of City of Stairs)  and another by S.M. White (an anthology buddy!). Needless to say, I'll be giving Book Two another title, and I actually like the new one better. After a couple other prospects wrap up, I'll post it here formally.

But with its old title, City of Blades has been making the rounds in the agent circuit, since I feel it's more "publishable" in its current state. Additionally, it's also been entered in Mark Lawrence's "Great Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off!" This was a great opportunity for me, and I'm hoping to have good news to share in the coming months. My novel will be read by Mihir Wanchoo of Fantasy Book Critic. Really excited to see the feedback it'll be getting!

3. Anthologies: The ebook edition of Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues is now available on Kindle (EDIT: and other places!) It contains my fantasy/Western short story, "The Lonesome Dark."

I've also entered another short story from the same universe into another anthology competition, but I haven't heard back from them yet. When I get the word, I'll post it here.

That's about it for now! Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll be starting work on Book Three of Lore of the Reluctant this summer. Already have a lot of fun ideas for it.

Take care!

None Shall Pass

Just finished my first round of edits last night on City of Blades. Happy to report that there weren't too many things that needed to be added or changed. Basically, it wasn't the mess in the structural sense that I thought it was going to be. Whenever I break from my habit of on-the-spot editing, I keep thinking things are going to get crazy when I read through the next time.

Luckily, that wasn't the case!

While my friends are reading through the second draft, I'm going to be working on None Shall Pass, a prequel novella to The Outcasts of Vampire Flats and City of Blades. It'll pick up just after Jasper's death and follow our three adventurers as they struggle to make their way over the Backbone of the World--and on top of that, convince themselves that they should be the ones to save the world.

This story will be up on Amazon for free eventually, as an introduction to the series.

I'll also be getting a printed copy for myself pretty soon for more edits, and so the artist can read through and get some ideas for what she wants to do for the cover.

Later!

More Writing. More Shadowrun.

Back to college. Back to making more progress on Book 2!

I've updated the progress bar to reflect a rough estimate of where I am as far as writing goes. We're definitely closing in on the end, and I think now that summer fun is over and I have more time to crank out some chapters in the library, that percentage will rise drastically over the next few weeks.

I'll also work on getting another sample from the story going in the near future, along with a proper post to "lock in" the final title for Book 2. At this point, I've let it sit for long enough and it still seems right, so I'm gonna take the leap and stick with it for the duration.

On the promotional side of things, I would also like to get some kind of free ebook up on Amazon that serves as an introduction to Lore of the Reluctant. Stories like Wool have proven that having that low barrier of entry is ideal.

So just to break everything down:

1 - Lock in the final title for Book 2.

2 - Finish Book 2!

3 - Begin the editing process. Call in those old favors. Send my editor friends on guilt trips.

4 - Research the possibility of getting The Outcasts of Vampire Flats on CreateSpace (physical copy), iTunes, and B&N Nook. Consider doing the same for Book 2.

5 - Write an "Introductory Story" for the Lore of the Reluctant series to publish for free.

6 - Hire Lexy to get started on the cover art.

7 - Publish Book 2!

And, of course, since I promised myself that I'd write/publish at least three stories using this setting, I'll eventually start plotting out Book 3, which is really just a vague idea at this point.

I'll keep this blog updated as I go through the steps! And I do want to thank everyone who has an interest in this story for being patient.

--

I've been hopelessly addicted to the Shadowrun universe lately, and there's 20 years' worth of material waiting for me to read through. This is gonna get dark, I can already tell!

Word Count!

My overall goals I hoped to achieve the Lore of the Reluctant series have always included the following:

1) Create fun fantasy stories that can be read as standalone adventures, but likewise take place in a greater storyline. Much like the old Conan stories, you can certainly read them out of order, but reading them chronologically gives you a greater sense of his journey.

2) Have fun with the genre, but don't make fun of the genre. I'm writing as a fan, not as a critic.

3) And lastly, keep them short so they don't wear out their welcome. I'm writing fantasy, but I'm also writing comedy, which I feel works better when it sticks around only for as long as it needs to. As an added bonus, it also allows me to make meaningful progress on the stories, despite my rickety schedule.

But to that last point, I promised myself (in a blog post, no less!) that I'd try to flesh out the world a bit more, and I feel as though I'm doing just that with Book 2. There's a lot more lore packed into this story, and because of that, I don't think I'll be able to keep it confined to the 50,000 word count that I was aiming for.

So, as a tentative heads-up, Book 2 might be a tad longer than I'd planned, which might kick it's overall progress back a bit, but hopefully not that much. In the coming days, I hope to have another excerpt from Book 2 here on the blog, but I will say that I recently had to write a "Lockpick Rap" for Jasper, which is every bit as silly as it sounds!

~~

As for what I've been up to outside of writing, I've gone back to work at the used bookstore here in town, which, as always, is an absolute joy. I might also be taking a free online course at Coursera, since it happens to be Lord of the Rings Online-centric. It's an honor system thing, so it's not for college credit or anything beyond the experience. Sounds like fun, and it comes highly recommended by the people who've tried it, so I'll probably give it a shot.

Here's the link for those interested.

We also went to go see Edge of Tomorrow, which was an excellent sci-fi film and way, way better than I thought it would be. I highly recommend it. As for books, I'm currently reading the Japanese light novel the movie was based on, All You Need is Kill, in addition to Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan. I always see Sullivan hanging around /r/Fantasy, and he always toes the line between contributor and promoter very well. He also just seems like a super nice guy, to boot. So I picked up his latest sci-fi/fantasy offering, and it's turning out marvelously. I love books that can strike a good balance between dialogue and worldbuilding without being too wordy, and Hollow World has met the criteria so far.

Really great stuff. It's been a fun summer so far!

Excerpt from: "Lore of the Reluctant - BOOK 2"

The assassin wasn't on a job, and she hadn't been for some time. Every now and then, she questioned whether that still made her an assassin and if she could even rightly claim that title these days. Over the regular course of the last few years, she had certainly killed people—multitudes, even—but it had always been in combat, in self-defense. She couldn't even remember the last time she had cut a contract.

On those off days, she questioned further: Did she even have it in her anymore? Could she kill a man or woman for no other reason beyond their names being scrolled across the wrong sheet of parchment?

It took people like their driver, Jacob, to make her revisit those questions with marked intensity.

Jacob, who preferred to be called “Jake,” who made his own liquor once, who departed university early because “those boneheads couldn't teach him nothin',” who could break any horse, who could win any bare-knuckle fight with any chump south of the Portis Freeholds. It couldn't have been more than a half-hour since Acys had gone into the shop, but it felt like flimsy concepts like time broke down around the ramblings of someone like Jake—not Jacob.

“So, I wandered the North for a time, mostly bouncing from job to job between the Freeholds. They always said I could stick around on a permanent basis if I cared to. I was that good at what I did, but I couldn't put down roots like that. Never seemed right. Like I knew I was needed elsewhere, you know?”

“Mmhm,” the assassin said, hearing a pause.

“Got it in my mind to head south, happened to pass through Trevarun before hitting the Red River and met up with a man running some stables near the edge of town and got a job breaking horses. You ever head out that way, go to the Reiser Stables and ask anybody there. I was the finest horse trainer they'd seen in years. Years, I'm telling you. Old Mr. Reiser said I was the best he'd ever employed. Go ahead and ask him.”

“Mmhm.”

“Would-a stayed longer than I had. Stars above, the Reisers practically begged me not to leave, but it was just like before. Got that same damn feeling that I wasn't quite where I needed to be. You ever get that feeling, Jasper?”

“Mmhm.” The assassin, Jasper, unsheathed one of the twin daggers at her hips and used it to scratch the dirt out from under her fingernails. “Shit happens.”

“It's like there's gonna be a place on the road where everything's just gonna work out perfectly, and then I'll be able to put down roots and do so with a smile. I'm sure they want me back in the ring already. There's a guy down in Winterset who would pay me fifty zayl a fight because of the crowds I drew in.” He slapped the door of the coach. “Just taking this job as a driver to help pay my way back down there. Bet he's willing to up my pay just for showing up—”

“Hey, dude...” Jasper sheathed the dagger and opened the door out of the coach. “Listen, I'm gonna stretch my legs and see what the others are up to, all right?”

Jake-not-Jacob looked at her blankly from the driver's seat, twisting the reins as if he hadn't heard. “What was that?”

She sighed. “Me go that way, check on others. I'll be back in a bit.”

“Oh... okay.” He waved at her. “I'll be right here, then.”

“More's the pity.”

“What?”

“I just saw a kitty.”

“Oh...”

Jasper rolled her eyes and walked past the general store. Whatever was keeping Acys, she really didn't want to interrupt. Also, she didn't really care. Instead, she pressed on into the small town of Oliver's Field.