Documents of Tabat: Artists of Tabat

Life in the new place continues pleasant; this morning it is raining, but the construction workers across the way are slicker-clad and working away doggedly. I’ve been listening to Vienna Teng’s album, Aims. Here’s one of my favorites from it:

As I listen and witness the cars passing by on California Avenue – black egieb blue yarg etihw – I’ve been working on a bespoke near future SF piece where I get to play around a bit with ideas of body augmentation, virtual life, and the access to either of them afforded by economic class. Here’s some of this morning’s writing:

Malady could understand the concept of the artificial hand and how useful it could be in this life, but she didn’t understand why they put so much emphasis on it at first.
After two weeks at University, though, she did, because here they spent most of their time in meat life and very little in mind life, even in classes. And when they went into mind life, the things they got there were like the meat hand to Malanie ““ fripperies, seldom used.

Still, even here, plenty of other ways to do things presented themselves: rather than reach your hand for food, have it come to you in a floating dish or handed to you by a helper, probably mechanical but here they even had human helpers, which was truly deeply madly odd to her way of thinking.

She said as much to her roommate Michelle. Michelle was short and peppy and purple-haired today, with turquoise stars over her cat-pupiled eyes. While her appearance changed from time to time ““ she had full mods, the best old money could buy ““ she was invariably a combination of irritated and amused at her scholarship roommate’s oddities. She said, “For gosh sakes, Mal, surely you want to do things for yourself? That’s what humans do.”

“That’s what humans do,” was one of her more frequent expressions, along with “That’s just how it is” and “That’s how they always do it.” The latter two had figured plentifully in her orientation conversations with Malady, who’d spent her flight and taxi ride in her Memory Palace and had only fully come into meat when Melanie demanded it.

Enjoy this sample of Cat’s writing and want more of it on a weekly basis, along with insights into process, recipes, photos of Taco Cat, chances to ask Cat (or Taco) questions, discounts on and news of new classes, and more? Support her on Patreon..

Happy New Year, one and all! I thought I’d start the New Year talking about what I’m working on at the moment, putting individual stories up on Amazon and Smashwords. Between publications and backlog, I’ve got about 200 to play with, so it’s a pretty big task, given that I’d like to have almost all of them up by the end of the month. But if I consider that some are flash, which I’ll put up individually on QuarterReads and release in a compendium, it becomes less daunting.

I’m getting faster at the process as I go, and I’m also refining it, which unfortunately means I need to go back over some of the earlier releases, just to make them all look the same as far as prettiness and completeness goes.

Would it be better to space releasing the stories out over the course of a year? Probably. But I’d like to get this all set up and done so I can move onto other things. I have enough stories that will be added over the course of the year as I write them or their rights become available that there will be plenty of additions as is.

What I’ve done with the stories is split them up into series. This is an easy enough task because I’ve got plenty of clusters of stories where characters or locations repeat, as with Twicefar Station, which is the backdrop for “Amid the Words of War,” “Kallakak’s Cousins,” and “On TwiceFar Station, As the Ships Come and Go.” It’s also the same world as “TimeSnip,” whose main character appears in “On TwiceFar Station, As the Ships Come and Go.”

Why I’m doing this:

1. This allows me to provide readers who like a particular story with a way to find similar ones. If they read “Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart,” for instance, and want to find other steampunk stories by me, they can look at the others in the Altered America series.
2. This lets me play with KDP in a meaningful way. If I make the first book Kindle only for at least the first year, I can use the Kindle Select promotional tools and get readers to sample a story by giving it to them free.

Here’s what I’ve got sorted of the series so far, with a description of each.

Altered America (steampunk)
Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart
Rappacini’s Crow

Closer Than You Think (near future SF)
All the Pretty Little Mermaids
Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable
Zeppelin Follies
English Muffin, Devotion on the Side
Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars
Therapy Buddha

Farther Than Tomorrow (slipstream & space opera)
Bus Ride to Mars
Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain
Grandmother
Elsewhen, Within, Elsewhen

Superlives (superheroes)
Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut
Acquainted with the Night

Tales of Tabat (secondary world fantasy)
Narrative of a Beast’s Life
How Dogs Came to the New Continent
Events at Fort Plentitude
Sugar
Love, Resurrected
In the Lesser Southern Isles

Twicefar Station (far future SF)
Kallakak’s Cousins
On TwiceFar Station, As the Ships Come and Go
Amid the Words of War
I Come From the Dark Universe

Villa Encantada (urban fantasy/horror)
Eagle-haunted Lake Sammammish
Villa Encantada
Crowned with Antlers Comes the King

Women of Zalanthas (secondary world fantasy)
Aquila’s Ring
Mirabai the Twice-lived
Karaluvian Fale

The World Beside Us (urban fantasy/horror)
Jaco Tours
Magnificent Pigs
Heart in a Box
Can You Hear the Moon?
Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane

So far, after approximately a month of getting stuff up there, I’m seeing some small sales, but also a tiny uptick in my collections that could be due to something else entirely. (Self-publishing is such a mysterious process!) So over the course of the year, I’ll be tracking the results.