ArmadilloCon 2026

Dara Kountz, spouse, and Shlomi Harif — and books!

The latest ArmadilloCon in Austin was a blast. The QuickSilver Quills Collective was there in force, as were many, many books and wares for sale in the Dealer Room.

I collaborated with Elizabeth Moon on the upcoming novel, Horngard, due out October 6th. She was here as well, with T-shirts in lieu of books, as they’re not done printing them yet! We were on a panel on co-writing, and much laughter was had. As was advice equally appropriate to critique groups in general: Be gentle with feedback, create a safe place to give and receive feedback, leave egos outside, and remember to laugh. I can’t wait to work with Elizabeth again.

I’ve got three manuscripts in play at the moment: Last Run, a post-apoc SF story, Zepps, a SF thriller, and Induction, a spicy SF thriller. It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes out of this. My WIP is a hard SF.

Zepps was interesting to do edits: one member of our collective is a rocket somethingorother (I want to say scientist, but he keeps swatting me down on that. Victor). Cue me spending some quality time with Claude to work out the science of airships and CO2 processing, to ensure that what I write can theoretically be possible in 2151–provided Claude doesn’t kill us all before then.

More anon…

Flipping the Page

I wanted Angels to be finished, or at least topped off, by January 1. I missed that deadline, but my real next deadline is getting back to my editor with changes to Infection, which is a whole other genre and animal. Then Last Run needs a thorough editing, and Induction, for re-release with Infection. I’ve got a couple of shorts that I want to write, and one titled Five Thousand Words that I’m rewriting after the Austin Public Library workshop. And shopping stories. And getting things together to find an agent.

I’m also going to try and emulate Marshall Ryan Maresca‘s amazing blog posting schedule. Once I have a good sense of the kind of content I want to put out.

Wow. Okay. I guess there’s plenty of work to do… Happy 2018! I hope.

Published in EDF! And a great workshop, too!

Logo for Every Day Fiction online magazine

Every Day Fiction

I was randomly checking my Submittable site and noticed that, hey, one of my flash fiction pieces got published! Best Shot is a dystopian snapshot of future warfare in Israel. Oh, the happy places I go to when writing… Check out EDF site (click their logo on the left) and ready great short pieces every day!

On other fronts I got first feedback on a SF manuscript I’ve had kicking round in the “almost ready” state. No, it’s not. And that’s what editors are for. But it’ll be better, soon. Infection is the sequel to Induction, and there are two more books in the series.

Aside from all that I’m plowing through Angels (working title), which is part of my Upline universe. I’m shopping two short stories from that milieu right now, so let’s just say that American reproductive rights fascism might actually beat my fiction to the market.


Windsor Park Library Creative Writing Workshop is a judged competition run by Adeena Reitberger, who’s an editor of American Short Fiction, as well as an ACC English professor. We’re in month two of four twice-per-month meetings. There are some seriously talented folks there!

Many thanks to the Austin Public Library for sponsoring the workshop and providing space and time for us to meet, and to Adeena Reitburger for making it all happen.