Hello, hello!

Whenever possible, I try to crouch, sit, or kneel when interacting with my daughter, because I read somewhere once that getting on a child’s level while interacting with her is good in some way. Obviously I don’t remember all of the details, but I figure that, if nothing else, she would appreciate not having to crane her head to see her parents’ faces all the time.

My daughter is not yet able to speak to me, and I don’t understand her toddler babble very well, so I’m not sure if she gets much out of the experience. But I do. When I first started doing it, all I was doing was crouching down to her level, then getting up a few moments later when my knees hurt. But as time went on, things began to change. I began to look around and see the world from a perspective closer to hers. Everything was huge—my wife was a giant! Perhaps the closest comparable experience as an adult is standing at the food of a mountain, or at the base of an enormous tree. It can be quieting and awe-inspiring to see the world as too large to take in. It’s amazing to think that, for her, everything might feel that way.

But clearly the awe isn’t too overpowering, or she’s gotten numb to it, because she just wants to climb on everything.

Anyway, The Failed Technomancer, chapter 18, is now live! Westley really needs to sneeze, but he, 64Bit, and Kayla are trying to hide from a maddened rozie… Can he keep it in?

I swear the chapter is about way more than just that.

And now, I’ve got a bunch of links to share! Lezlie over at The Nerdy Narrative was kind enough to review The Failed Technomancer! Lezlie does some amazing work, and as an indie author I particularly appreciate the spotlight she gives the community.

First, Lezlie mentioned my book on a TBR video. The link should go to about when my book was mentioned, but the whole video has recommendations for books that look great to me. (Lord of a Shattered Land, in particular, I’ve been seeing people praise all over the place.)

After reading the book, Lezlie first wrote up a review on her blog! You can see her full thoughts there, as well as learn about my unexpected connection with her Jack Russell terrier, and how that led to me getting a review in the first place.

Here’s a line that made me chuckle:

I had several characters that I loved, but poor 64Bit was not one of them. I was intrigued by his past and also his future – but it was Cortex, Hannah, Westley and Khalil that stole my heart.

Lezlie Smith

You and my writing group both, Lezlie. But I’m okay with that—my intent with 64Bit was not to make a cuddly, feel-good protagonist, but one that had a fairly strained relationship with those around him, yet remained compelling regardless. It was pretty difficult, but since Lezlie was intrigued by his past and future, I think I succeeded with at least one reader!

I was also very grateful for the positive comments Lezlie had regarding the audiobook.

And finally, Lezlie later did a video review, along with a handful of other books. (I cannot believe how much this woman reads. I wish I could do that.) Like before, the link should go to specifically when my book is mentioned, but the whole vide is full of fun stuff.

(As I’m typing all of this, my daughter is dancing on my lap, singing and whacking things with a hair brush. She’s is having a great time, but if there are any weird aslkhasdfs that I fail to correct, that’s what’s up.)

Lezlie, you’re wonderful! Thank you so much for your reviews, thank you for your honest feedback in that review, and thank you for introducing me to some great books to read.

Discussions—Dragonsteel MiniCon 2023

For this week, I’m reviewing my notes on Why Sci-Fi? This was a very fun, very interesting panel. The two things I wanted to touch on here were discussions in genre definitions: genre versus literary fiction, and what science fiction is in the first place.

I believe I brought this up in a previous blog post, but the panelists defined literary and genre fiction in the following ways:

Literary Fiction. Fiction driven by character and theme.

Genre Fiction. Fiction where the setting itself is a character.

(As an aside, I found it amusing how much the panelists made fun of “literary” fiction, mostly for it existing as a category in the first place: the existence of such a category suggests that anything else can’t possibly be literary, after all. It’s rather condescending. But, the above definitions are the more kindly, discussion-friendly definitions.)

I view genre as exclusively a marketing tool, so I get a little weirded out by genre discussion that gets too… defining on what can or can’t be written, or what is or isn’t allowed in a book. But I thought the above definitions were useful, and they leave a lot of space for overlaps—character-driven fiction where the setting itself is a character! (Wait, I think that’s called upmarket fiction, maybe. Reinvented the wheel there.)

The next definition they discussed was for “Sci-Fi” itself. And their definition was this: “A book is science fiction if on some level the book is about the relationship between man and technology.” (This is how “stonepunk” can be considered science fiction, despite literally taking place in the stone age.)

I really like this definition, and it makes me think of a lot of sci-fi classics in a new light. Dune, for example, is defined by the galaxy’s dependance on spice. But why is spice so critical? Because of the technology they have, which is incapable of safe, consistent interstellar travel without it. If someone made a ship that eliminated the need for spice, the entirety of the Dune universe would change irrevocably—and, I think, it wouldn’t really feel like Dune anymore.

(Based on snippets I’ve read, I think something like that does happen in the later Dune books, but I really only thought the first one was worth reading anyway. I got a little farther than God Emperor of Dune and realized the series has been out of gas for a while.)

Writing Updates

I might have a few new readers here from Lezlie’s channel, and if that is the case, welcome! I always cap off my blog posts with an update on my personal writing projects. You can see stuff that I’ve shared for free over in the Stuff to Read link, which includes weekly posts of The Failed Technomancer chapters, as well as A Dinner Diabolical (a short story that made me a semi-finalist in Writers of the Future) and an article on how to make and use constructed languages in your own writing. I plan on continuing to add to that section as I write more and more.

I am at about 17,500 words of The Precious Burden of Joy. That’s not nearly the jump I had last week, but I’m ok with that, even if I’d prefer to write a minimum of a thousand words a day—five thousand a week. I had a lot of stuff that disrupted my writing time last week, but to my memory I still got in a consistent thirty-minute minimum a day. I’m hoping that this book doesn’t go past 80,000 words, but The Failed Technomancer was originally had a goal of 120,000 words, and Inner Demon originally had a goal of 100,000 words (it ended up about 120,000), so we’ll see.

I don’t normally go into this much detail on projects that are in some sort of waiting period, but it’s probably a good idea for me to do that right now for anyone that’s new! All of these projects are in some sort of waiting stage, hopefully to be unveiled in full next year:

• Inner Demon is a dark fantasy about a girl named Gnyphe (pronounced: KNIFE) who woke up in an alley with no memories of her past and the ability to use shadows as portals. The book follows her as she struggles to reclaim her past, but eventually starts to wonder if finding her past will cost her present—all while trying to find a friend who has been kidnapped. I submitted Inner Demon to Baen’s slush pile and, based on the timeline on their website, I should hear back sometime February–March next year. If Baen moves ahead with the book, then we’ll be published on their schedule. If Baen doesn’t, I’ll self-publish it the same way I did The Failed Technomancer, which will include an eventual audiobook. (Inner Demon is set in an expanded world that I’d like to write more books in someday, but that will only ever happen if writing becomes my full-time job. I have too many ideas I want to pursue for the limited time and resources I have now.)
• The Courage in a Small Heart is a short story (epic mouse fantasy) about a craemus named Hazel. Hazel is afraid of just about everything—not an unusual experience for a mouse, although she seems more easily put in a fit than others—and she’s sick of it. She doesn’t want to be afraid anymore. So she joins the Sharpteeth, a band of mice that patrol the forest to lure predators away from their home (Whiskerroot). There, Hazel begins to discover that there’s more to courage than simply not feeling fear. The Courage in a Small Heart has been submitted to Writers of the Future, and, like Inner Demon, I expect to hear results from that book sometime February–March 2024. I’m only waiting on sharing this book here because, even though I have a tiny audience, I don’t want to run any risk of any of the Writers of the Future judges learning something that might disqualify me through them knowing too much. But since I retain the rights even if the book wins, I will post an expanded version of this story to the blog (mostly expanded through footnotes—the flavor of which are inspired by both Watership Down and Bartimaeus) at some point next year.
• The Betrayed Technomancer is the sequel to The Failed Technomancer, and it is not a priority project at the moment. I work on it from time to time. If I’m lucky enough to have anyone just starving for this sequel, I do need to apologize. It’s very important to me that this book remains as grim and gritty (with a sharp edge of hope) as the first book, but writing that way also left me really depressed by the time I finished The Failed Technomancer. So I’m trying to find a way to stay true to the vision of that (intended) trilogy while not turning myself into a grumpy monster while I have a baby running around the house.

And now you’re basically up-to-date! I write a little bit everywhere, and I’m having fun doing it, because I’m still small enough that I have the space to experiment like this. Someday I might specialize into something more specific… but I hope I always write varied. That’s the goal.

Send-Off

What are your top sci-fi picks (books or film) and why?