Flechette Phishing
Cross-posted from the QuickSilverQuills.com critique group: https://QuickSilverQuills.com/flechette-phishing/
The new state of the author scam.
Adding Short Stories and Audio Books!
Maggie Weber strikes again! Consent is now joined by Shloshim, Shut Eye, and Joy on Audible. next short story in my collection is now out. Listen to it here!
Blood of Leeches is a new ebook, currently enjoying (for the split second) a #1 rating:
I’m currently soliciting for an audiobook producer (aka a narrator) for the story.
Consent Now Out as an Audiobook!
Consent is a science fiction short about, frankly, revenge as a PTSD cure. I don’t encourage it and, having had PTSD for decades, there’s a reason this story is in the fiction instead of self-help genre.
Maggie Weber was the producer (voice and sonic layout) of the book, and she’s working on a few more short stories from my collection. (She’s also a human and dog mom, clothing upseller (check out her book), prolific youtube…and apparently someone who doesn’t need to sleep).
Lickspittling
From my BlueSky account: Lickspittling is a good look for G.Santos and the Jan 6 traitors. But for Google and Apple to bribe Il Duce with funds for his Royal Ballroom is a disservice not only to shareholders, but to the American people. Ah, fascism, the grift that keeps on grifting.
ArmadilloCon 2025
It was a busy weekend in Austin. ArmadilloCon also hosts a writers workshop on the Friday before the Con, then a whirlwind of panels, meetups, and connections between authors, readers, and industry professionals. Like last year, White Gold Wielders, a critique group originally based in Austin, met to attend and sit on panels, hawk books published by its members, and have the rare opportunity to meet in person.
(Can’t you tell we had a professional do the group picture?)
From left to right:
* Me
* Elizabeth Moon
* Christianne Lupher
* Paige E. Ewing
* Courtney Ritz Lednicky
* Tom Thompson
* Iolo (David Warner)
Check out our website for other folks’ profiles. And news. And events!
ArmadilloCon offers a writing workshop every year, where submitted short stories (or portions of a larger work) are critiqued by a small group of peers and two instructors. I’ll run it next year and am excited to see the submissions. There’s also a prompted flash fiction contest. More on all that next spring.
WorldCon Seattle
This was my first one. Got to hear Larry Niven, have a brief chat with David Brin, and shake hands with one of the authors who brought me into science fiction: Robert Silverberg. I read Across a Billion Years in middle school, and loved it so much that I only remembered returning the book to my grade school library twenty years later. Brilliant YA.
I had a very short hit list of panels, and there was no way, short of cloning, for me to get to every one I wanted. I should have researched the panel participants to qualify the panels better; some were much less interesting/ informative than I’d hoped. Lesson learned. There were good surprises as well: in a panel on self-publishing advertising, where panelists talked about click-throughs and their experiences, no other than Gail Carriger, she of the Parasol Protectorate. She dives deep into data analytics to publicize her books. Brilliant.
The con suites and outside parties sponsored by various groups were also interesting; meeting other authors in different places in their writing careers was cool — it helped calm some of the impostor syndrome that haunted me. Haunts me.
I ended up standing in the (one-hour-long) registration line with Kirsten Gong-Wong, the managing editor of Locus, and her spouse. It’s amazing how much one can learn from standing in line.
I also met with Joshua Bilmes, head of the Jabberwocky Agency, and one of his agents, regarding a contract. More on that when it’s public. The life of an agent, with all the attendant conventions and authors to meet, is exhausting. Wall-to-wall meetings, it seems.
I’ll be going to the LA Worldcon next year; I’ll be better prepared to get the most out of it.
The Dog Days
Writing a post from 36,000 feet on a mobile phone with broadband. Life in 2025, for better or worse.
It’s WorldCon week. I’m looking forward to meeting with a few authors and agents. I’ve got an audiobook producer working on one of my short stories. More on that anon.
From Sales to Salute: Thinking of Memorial Day Celebrations
A day that in Israel was solemn, accompanied by sirens, tears, overwhelming media coverage, and the faces and names that every family in Israel connects. And while there are those who fell in “administrative” work (aka, car crashes when not on a mission, passed from disease), the large majority of them are young men, and now women, who gave their lives in the defense of their country. Everyone stops on the roads and highways for the sirens, every student has a focus on the day, and people are interviewed on the lives and sacrifice of their fathers, siblings, daughters and sons and other loved ones. It’s immersive, it’s a bonding (or at least binding) event.
That the definition of “defense” under the reign of PM Netanyahu and a cabal of fascists, if not racists, is the same that drove the 1973 or 1967 wars is a separate, if more tragic, issue for lives wasted for no value on both sides.
In America, except for a minute fraction of Americans, it’s a day off, a day for special sales, for a change to get out and rev up the first big barbeque or crawfish boil party. Wal-Mart, Best Buy, even the religiously respectful HEB (shout-out to an amazing grocery chain). Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, and others are open for the eager, vacationing public. A few sites handwave the salute to the troops that died, making a handy shopping day for them.
What would it be like if America, as a country, treated Memorial Day more as an active, national day of reflection? Where Americans could come together despite their political, social, or racial differences? While the optimistic me imagines the conversations and connections that could be forged in group settings, the cynic imagines clumps of fractured groups, each trading their daily anger for each other for a safer one for those safely dead.
Things to consider.
March Update
A mundane, pedestrian title, to be sure. My day job has dibs on my time, and slipping in time for fresh writing has been tough. Okay, that’s a cop out—I’ve had a couple of months of dithering with a novel that started as a single POV YA novella with a little magic thrown into reality into a four POV novel, complete with attendant character arcs, crises, and antagonists. The (somewhat) misleading tag line, as of now, is: Jewish widower with two kids meets a Jewish fairy.
Yes, I know there are no Jewish fairies. (Nor non-Jewish ones, but that’s another story.)
The research is difficult (it takes place in 1979), and, except for the famed Golem of Prague, there’s no specific mythology as exist in other religions or regions of the world. I’ve got a deadline on June 1 to complete the first draft and get it to alpha readers, so my Shmuley Myers murder mystery series is on hiatus until this is out.
2025 Olio
Writing
This is shaping up to be a busy year. The fourth novel in the Shmuley Myers mystery series, tentatively titled “A Measure of Mercy,” will be out in the fall. Two other under-wraps projects are underway as well. Or is it three?
Armadillocon
I’ll be attending and co-running this year’s Writers Workshop. It’s an excellent opportunity to get peer and professional critiques of your work. The ‘con is low-key, welcoming authors and readers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Meet your authors, learn about the business, and attend fun panels (I hear there’s filking).
WorldCon 2025
I’ll be attending WorldCon in Seattle (August 13-17). Glasgow was a trip too far for me last year, but I’m jazzed to go. ArmadilloCon faves Nisi Shawl (whose talks on “Writing the Other” are an ArmadilloCon must-see) and Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries) will be there.
Social Media
While I have accounts on Meta and the site formerly known as Twitter venues, I do not use them. Find me at BlueSky (or, obviously, here).