Fiction Reading: Acquainted with the Night

Over halfway through the year, and here’s some of the happenings for July.

Online I taught workshops on Story Fundamentals, Flash Fiction, Writing Steampunk & Weird Western, Moving from Idea to Draft, and Editing 101. I’ll announce September and October classes next week. I also got a chance to teach at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference mid-month, which was terrific.

I wrote short stories “Say Yes,” “A House Alone,” and “Another Selkie Story,” all of which were posted for Patreon supporters. (You can see a pictorial version of my July Patreon here.) As always, I’ve got a crop that I’m working on: highlights include a story about a woman who buys a magical talking mask only to find she doesn’t agree with what it’s saying. I also worked on urban fantasy Brazen, about a magic-wielding post apocalyptic hellion.

Videogames I’ve been playing are Stardew Valley and Dream Daddy. Curse whoever introduced me to them. In RPG news, my Star Wars RPG game managed a session. You’ll be glad to know my prophet/conwoman continues to talk her way out of things successfully but the rest of the party didn’t want to take her suggestion of throwing a mysterious crate out a fifth-floor window in order to discover the contents.

I continue using Habitica, which I blogged about here. I have a follow-up post in the works.

SFWA work included working with the Galaktika settlement, answering a bunch of e-mails, a multiplicity of video calls, and nudging a couple of projects along.

Books I read included the following. I’ve bolded the ones I particularly enjoyed:
Karen Abott, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
R.S. Belcher, The Brotherhood of the Wheel
Mike Caro, Caro’s Book of Poker Tells
Ramsey Campbell, Demons by Daylight
Tori Curtis, Eelgrass
Laurell K. Hamilton, Crimson Blood
Elizabeth Hand, Winterlong
Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future
Michael M. Jones (editor), Scheherezade’s Facade
Damon Knight, The Futurians
Tanith Lee, Red as Blood
Gabriel Squalia, Viscera
Glynn Stewart, Starship’s Mage
R J Theodore, Flotsam
Kentaro Toyama – Geek Heresy

Most of the last couple of months has been focused on one of several things: finishing the beta draft of Hearts of Tabat, finishing up the second edition of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, sorting through details for the release of Altered America: Steampunk Stories, or SFWA’s Nebulas Conference, which took place midmonth in Chicago, and which I blogged about last week.

So here’s some highlights of my summer schedulee.

Tomorrow I’ll post the list of classes for June and July, which includes a round of the Writing F&SF Stories workshop (Wednesday evenings) as well as the Advanced Workshop (Tuesday evenings). I’m not 100% sure, but I think that’s the last round of classes for 2016, aside from a workshop I am doing for Clarion West this fall and maybe a co-taught one every once in a while. I’ve got a lot of travel coming up in the latter half of the year and I’d like to be able to focus on writing and SFWA as well. Whether or not I decide to run for office again next year depends in part on how much I can manage to get done this year.

In answer to several people asking about the difference between the two multi-session workshops — I created the Advanced one for people who took the first F&SF one and wanted more. If you haven’t taken the first, you should do that rather than the Advanced Workshop, regardless of skill level, because it lays out my theories of storytelling in a coherent way while the second ranges wildly all over the place.

June 10 is the release of Altered America, which is a compilation of all my steampunk stories. Patreon supporters at the $5 level and above will get a free electronic copy ten days in advance. This has ten stories in it altogether, a number of which were published on Patreon. I hope to do a similar mini-collection of near-future SF by the end of the year, which will also go to Patreon supporters beforehand.

June also sees the release of a Storybundle of writing books organized by Kris Rusch that includes the 2nd edition of Creating an Online Presence, which is why I spent part of last month frantically getting that updated in time.

Bud Sparhawk and I wrote a novelette together, “Haunted,” that should appear in July’s Abyss and Apex. It’s space fantasy. I think. We had a lot of fun with it,but it’s definitely not a comedy.

July 5th will feature the release of both the class and book version of Moving from Idea to Draft. You’ll see several other classes appearing in the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including classes from Rachel Swirsky, Juliette Wade, and a couple of other folks.

Summer conventions include the Locus Awards weekend, Westercon, GenCon, Worldcon, and Dragoncon. After that I am off to Beijing for the Chinese Nebulas and will spend several weeks in China. Following that, Griffcon in Indiana, the Surrey Writers Conference, Orycon, and maybe WFC. (I’m not sure about that last. It’s been a travel-heavy year, and WFC isn’t my favorite convention. It always feels very anxious and unwelcoming, no matter what city I experience it in.)

Writing wise, I am completing the currently half-drafted YA novel based on “Circus in the Bloodwarm Rain,” which is currently laboring under the working titleConflagration and starting to flesh out the outline for the next Tabat book, Exiles of Tabat, which is the third of the quartet.

As always, plenty of stories are flowing and currently floating around in forms ranging from inchoate to semi-final draft. Right now I’m completing the Wizards of West Seattle story and realizing the concept’s going to end up becoming an ongoing series that probably will go out once a month or so on Patreon. I’m also thinking about a RPG supplement based on the copious notes I’ve been accumulating.

In SFWA areas, I’m focusing on a new committee that I’ll be working with, the Membership Retention Committee, whose job will be to look at the new member experience for SFWA members as well as how to keep the organization useful for members. (If you’re interested in volunteering with that, feel free to drop me a line.) Other efforts include a) working with SFWA fundraising, b) a small musical endeavor that I just prodded someone about and which involves Tom Lehrer (yes, that Tom Lehrer), and c) helping out where I can with some of M.C.A. Hogarth’s amazing efforts, such as this mysterious thing here lurking under a tarp that I am not at liberty to discuss. *mouths the words “SFWA University” then is dragged away by the SFWA honey badgers while shouting something about a guidebook*

Three other important SFWA things:

1. I’ll be watching the results of our decision to admit game writers with keen interest. I can tell you that the initial set is criteria is being voted on right now and I expect to see it announced soon.
2. An effort is in the works that I think will prove a lovely tribute to longtime SFWA volunteer Bud Webster and which will, in the longtime SFWA tradition, provide a benefit for professional writers at every level of their careers.
3. And we’ll (finally) be announcing some of the partnerships we’ve been making — you saw reps from Amazon, Audible, BookBub, Draft2Digital, Kickstarter, Kobo and Patreon at the Nebulas and those relationships are going to extend beyond the weekend and give our members special resources and relationships at all of those companies — and others, including one that I am super-stoked to have facilitated.

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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.