Kiwi Steampunk: The Third Shot (This time, we need you!)

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Dan

Earlier this year I made a bit of a noise about a couple of steampunk stories of mine which have been published and were circulating out there in the world (Waking the Taniwha at the Wily Writers’ website and All That Glitters, in the MoPO Tales from the Archives), and I hinted that there might be a third story on the way.

Well, that time is upon us. If you enjoyed my previous steampunk offerings and would like more, then do I have a deal for you!

I have been lucky enough to have been asked to write another story for the Ministry, this time for the Ministry Protocol anthology, which is set to accompany the up-and-coming steampunk RPG The Ministry Initiative, set in the same world as the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.

This anthology promises to deliver a host of fantastic steampunk fiction, and right now you can help make it happen by supporting the Kickstarter fund to get it going. After just two days, the Kickstarter is already 25% funded, which is awesome, and for pledging as little as $5 (US) you can be in line to receive the ebook edition of Ministry Protocol. Pledge options go up from there, offering a range of options with increasingly more awesome rewards, right the way up to getting your name in a Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel written by the ever-brilliant Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris.

By way of a teaser, my new story Where The River Shines brings us back to the MoPO agents Lachlan King and Barry Fergusson (created by my good friend and collaborator on all things SFFH Grant Stone), as they trail a thief into the depths of New Zealand’s misty backwaters. But they just may have found themselves a little out of their depth this time around…

So if you’d like to get this tale and a whole book of new stories in your hands, then drop in and pledge your support. While you’re there, check out the RPG and all the other great offers. The Ministry will be ever so pleased to have you aboard.

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Support the Sofa!

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Dan

starshipsofa-logoAs some of you may know, my recent travails into the world of writing and publishing short stories have been rather inextricably linked to a certain space-faring piece of furniture – the StarShipSofa.

Briefly, it goes like this: An article I wrote on NZ fantasy legend Hugh Cook was noticed by Sofa fiction wrangler Grant Stone, who in turn put me on to the StarShip as a source of story content, and I was soon over there doing narrations and even hearing my own work – in this instance, the Hugh Cook article – being read for an audience of thousands. Host Tony C. Smith’s enthusiasm for the genre was a shot in the arm, and it made me think one day as I was listening on the drive home that I could probably try my hand at something short, since all this novel-writing seemed to be a much longer game, and with a baby on the way it just might be that I could handle writing some short stories.

So on the back of being inspired by Tony and the StarShip, a little story called Crucible was born, and that story went on to be accepted and published and in turn filled me with the feeling that maybe I could write well enough to sell, after all. The rest is history (and I like to think, a work in progress). None of which would’ve happened had I not started listening to StarShipSofa.

Now, the thing about the StarShipSofa is that it’s free, always has been, and it brings some of the best fiction and non-fiction articles to the podosphere every single week, not to mention oodles of Tony’s enthusiasm which has an infectious quality all of its own.

But lately, the engines have been stuttering a bit.

Let me jump to the point. For a show like StarShipSofa – as well as its sister podcasts Tales to Terrify, Crime City Central and Protecting Project Pulp – to survive and continue putting out excellent content every week for nothing, they need donations. It needn’t be much, but every dollar or pound will help. I’ve made a couple of donations this year, because I realised that I’ve listened to all 280+ shows of the StarShip, as well as every Tales to Terrify episode and several Crime City Central episodes, and by donating even £20, that is still less than 5p per episode to date. And the inspiration that SSS has been to me has generated more than £20 in writing income, by a long way.

So if you’re a fan of the show, now is the time to dig down and find a few bucks to help keep the Starship going. If you’re not a fan, then it’s time you headed on over and found out why this podcast has been nominated for a Hugo three times and taken it home once already.

Also, if you donate right now, you’ll get some nice bonus audio to take away, including all 100+ of the original shows, and a recent How to Write Science Fiction podcast with SF legend Joe Haldeman.

So go, do it now. Keep the old girl running.

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Paint by Numbers up for an SJV Award!

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Dan

ASIM_55_cover_229_317I got some very exciting news last week. My short story Paint by Numbers, which was my first story to be accepted for publication in a print magazine and which appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine in December last year, has made it through some very tough competition indeed to gain a place on the final ballot for this year’s Sir Julius Vogel awards, in the short fiction category.

The other stories nominated for this category are Grant Stone’s Better Phones, from ASIM #56, Darian Smith’s Wearing the Star Cloak, from the Wily Writer’s website, Alicia Ponder’s Dying for the Record, and Lee Murray’s Hope is the thing with feathers. I’m quite stoked to be in such good company on the ballot, which reflects the quality of New Zealand’s speculative fiction writing talent, both established and emerging. It’s my third time with a shot at an SJV, so here’s hoping that this year, third time’s the charm.

But why, I hear you asking, has it taken so long to blog about this? Well, the good folks over at ASIM have tossed the idea around, and agreed to release a free ebook bundle containing both Paint by Numbers and Better Phones, which were heretofore not available for free online consumption. For a limited time, you can head over to the ASIM site and grab your copy in epub, mobi or PDF. That way, if you’re voting in the SJV awards, you can read all five stories and make a wholly informed choice.

The ASIM ebook story bundle can be found here, and the full list of SJV finalists, including links to the works where available, can be found here.

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When the Hero Comes Home TOC announced!

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Dan

When the Hero Comes HomeAnother week, another exciting announcement. Today, Dragon Moon Press unveiled the Table of Contents due to appear in their upcoming short fiction anthology, When the Hero Comes Home, Volume 2, and I’m pleased to announce that a short story of mine is there on the list.

Come is the Wolf in her Wounding is a dark fantasy tale of a barbarian queen, her wolf, and the dark secrets of her past that even she did not know until the day her world fell apart. It also happens to feature my favourite title for any short story I’ve written to date, and when you read the story (as I’m sure you’ll be keen to do) you’ll see why.

When the Hero Comes Home Vol 2 is due for an August release.

 

 

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Regeneration TOC announced!

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Dan

It’s an exciting day to be a Kiwi speculative fiction writer, with the line-up announced for Regeneration: New Zealand Speculative Fiction II, from Random Static Press, and it is a veritable who’s who of NZ spec fic writing today.

I am extremely pleased and excited to be included in the TOC, with my slightly dark and twisted tale of rural horror, Mother’s Milk. It’s great to be a part of this book, and to see my name there alongside people with whom I have worked and collaborated on projects over the past couple of years, and some of whom I’ve known for many years. Other contributing authors include Grant Stone, Jonathan James Todd, Cassie Hart, Anna Caro, Matt Cowens, Debbie Cowens, Tim Jones and many more.

While a lot of what I’ve been doing over the last couple of years in terms of getting short fiction out into the market has pretty much been me making myself and my work known to strangers, it’s nice that on this book I can feel like part of a community, with people I personally know and who I’ve sat down and had a beer with in times gone by, or plan to in the weeks to come.

Regeneration wil be launched later this year at the Au Contraire convention in Wellington (July 12-14, 2013). Keep an eye out for pre-order information.

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The Second Hit!

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Dan

Hiss! Bang! And the second shot of Kiwi Steampunk is here!

Head over to the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences podcast to listen to All That Glitters, another steampunk tale set is our very own Aotearoa, around the turn of the century. Agents Lachlan King and Barry Ferguson are called to an isolated mining town to investigate the strange appearance of a band of South Island miners who have walked out of a mine near the top of the North Island, dripping wet and mighty confused. They find the town all but abandoned, and as they descend into the realm of Ruaumoko, the Maori god of earthquakes, they find an explosive situation that will test both agents and their equipment sorely.

Narrated by yours truly, with Grant Stone as the voice of Lachlan King. Full credit going out to Grant, whose characters King and Ferguson first appeared in A Ruby in Rain, which was a finalist in the Parse Awards in 2012. And many thanks to Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris, for letting me step into their world to play.

Also, watch this space. There just might be a Third Shot on the way. Which is what I need to be doing RIGHT NOW…

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The First Hit

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Dan

So it looks like my first story for 2013 is loose in the wild!

I said last year that it was coming, and I even offered a prize for the first person to spot it and let me know. Since this was a very loose competition and I was pretty much making up the rules as I went along anyway, I’m going to throw the prizes out to the first two people to have Liked the post that SpecFicNZ put up about it on Facebook, before I was even really aware that it was out there. So well done Debbie Cowens and Morgan Davie. Goodies of some kind will be on their way to you (like I said, I’m making this one up as I go along).

Meanwhile, the story! A steampunk tale set in New Zealand, 1855, Waking the Taniwha can be found at the Wily Writers website, in both text and audio formats, for free download. Guest editor Richard Dansky (who, among other things, writes for the Tom Clancy Splinter Cell series of games), has this to say about Waking the Taniwha:

Borrowing liberally from steampunk, it looks to the Maori tales of dwellers in deep places, creatures that can be either monsters or protectors. Malevolent or benign, however, they are beasts of great power, and should never be awakened lightly. But when men make their own monsters, it may be time to risk venturing into those liminal spaces, regardless of the cost.

So please, go grab a copy and have a read or a listen.

And, to make it even more exciting, this is the first of a Kiwi Steampunk Double-Shot that I have coming this year. So keep your eyes peeled. There’s more to come, and it keeps getting better.

IMHO.

Posted in Podcast, Short Fiction | 2 Comments

Arrivals, and the Numbers Game

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Dan

Sometimes the trouble with living at the bottom of the world is that things can take a long time to get here. I’ll blame bushfires, and floods, and the secret zombie apocalypse, but at last I have a couple of copies of Bloodstones, the urban horror anthology which includes my story, The Bone Plate.

I’m pretty excited about this, as you can imagine, what with it being my first story published in a print anthology.

You can read the first page of this story by, well, zooming in the picture of that first page. Just here. If you want more, you can pick up a copy of the whole anthology from indiebooksonline.com.

As I look back, I’m quite pleased to say that I saw my first two stories published in print last year, and so far for 2013 I have six stories slated for publication, variously in print or electronic formats, all for at least some small amount of money, which I consider to be a pretty good start to the year. I’m hoping there will be more to this, even though I’ve had a good run of rejection letters since Christmas too.

So I had to ask myself, what is it about the stories I’ve sold, compared to the stories which have not been so successful, which might define them? What is it about some stories which have given them an edge over others?

Genre? I don’t think so. I’ve sold Horror, Hard(ish) SF, Psychological SF, Steampunk, Weird West, and Dark Fantasy in equal measures (I’ve always intended to keep my genres diverse, so I can play across the field).

Style? Subject matter? Political or social commentary? Once again, for all these things, I try to keep my writing diverse, so I can’t really attribute any of these things to the wide range of different markets I’ve got stories into.

Pen vs PC?

Now there’s something I can add up. And the numbers are very interesting.

Of the nine stories I’ve received sales contracts for since I started submitting almost two years ago, six of those stories were written pen on paper before they migrated to the computer for editing and submitting. The other three were first drafted on a keyboard.

What’s even more interesting, however, is the strike rate. I currently have five stories which I have been submitting (at least once, to professional or semi-pro venues) which have not been accepted. All five of those stories were first drafted on a PC. None of the stories I first wrote by hand which I have submitted are still in this limbo. Every one of them has sold.

(I also have one story which I wrote using Google Drive on my phone, the ipad and my PC, which is currently awaiting a reply after a rewrite request. It was an interesting experiment in utilising digital tools, and if it sells to the first venue I sent it to, then that will also be a statistic worth weighing up. But at the moment, I’m not counting it at all.)

So I think I can take something away from this, and that is that, for whatever reason, whether it’s because I get tired of looking at the screen, or there are too many distractions (like Facebook, and Twitter, and blogging, and RESEARCH!), or because I get caught up worrying about format and word counts and self-editing instead of just getting words on the page, I simply write better with a pen and paper in a quiet part of the house. And I currently have at least a half-dozen stories sitting on paper that need to be finished and make their way onto the computer. Looking at the numbers, I’d say that if I’m going to get more stories sold this year, then those are the ones I should be paying attention to.

So if you see me around here a bit less, you’ll know why. I can’t argue with those sorts of statistics.

 

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Dreaming of Djinn Cover revealed!

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Dan

The cover art for forthcoming fantasy anthology Dreaming of Djinn from Ticonderoga Publications, which includes my story Silver, Sharp as Silk, has made its first appearance on their website.

The artwork is by Ukraine artist Nadiia
Starovoitova, and is quite brilliant. Enjoy.

 

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Flight 55 Has Landed!

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Dan

Please forgive me for taking a moment to be excited about seeing my name printed on the front of a real life magazine…

Also, I’ve read this issue from front to back and I can honestly say that editor Jacob Edwards has done a fantastic job selecting and polishing these stories. I’m really pleased to be a part of it. This is a magazine I can be very proud to say was the first print publication that accepted a story of mine, and its actual physical arrival came ahead of Bloodstones by what will be only a week or two (they’re heading into the mailbox now, I’m told, which is also very exciting).

Head over to the launching pad and grab a copy. Well worth it.

By the way, if you’re still scouring the internet for signs of the story I promised woud be out soon (Remember? I even said there would be a prize for the first commenter to spot it) I can tell you that it’s not out yet. But will be soon. But not yet. That’s all. Keep looking. It will come when you least expect it…

(And yes, there will be a prize. Honest.)

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