WATER ON MARS!! And more.
Hi everyone! Long time, no post. I have been a busy bee the last few months, finishing up on Fourth World, helping a friend with an editing project, and blogging on The Pack of Aces. I have more info about what I’ve been up to below, but first matters first:
Did you hear the news? NASA announced today that they’ve found evidence of liquid water on Mars! And not as in “water in ancient times”—liquid water! on Mars! now!
This is very exciting to me, probably for a weird reason—see, I was banking on this. I was so confident that scientists would find this that I wrote it into the colonization timeline for Fourth World. But as I mentioned on this recent Pack of Aces post, scientific accuracy is very important to me. I want Fourth World to be as plausible as possible at the time of its release. I was a little nervous when NASA revealed they were going to be making a major announcement today, because I was a bit worried that they’d announce something that would knock Fourth World off the rails before it’s even been published. So when the announcement turned out to be something that I’d relied heavily on for one of the scientific premises of my book?
But possibly my favorite part of this announcement was this follow-up article in Nature about the hunt for life, the difficulty we might face due to contamination—and the ethics that might come into play if the race to reach the Red Planet becomes more important than the need to preserve scientific findings.
I’m not going to say anything about that other than
In other news…
• Did you know Perchance to Dream is on sale for just 99¢ right now? Well, it is! But the sale is only lasting through September 30, so hurry!
• Speaking of anthologies, I never actually announced it here: my next short story, “Seven Years Among Dragons,” is going to be published in Wings of Renewal, a solarpunk dragon anthology through Incandescent Phoenix Press. You can learn more about it here. Wings of Renewal releases on October 25, 2015!
• Want to learn more about “Seven Years Among Dragons”? Check out this interview I did with one of the editors, Claudie Arseneault!
• I also recently did an interview with The Bookgatherer, where I talked all about Fourth World! Though it was just published the other day, I did this interview in August, so some of the information is a bit out of date—namely, the release date. I’ve had to push it back a smidge due to some health problems. I will post here when I have the finalized release date ironed out, but I’m anticipating early 2016.
• I’ve also been keeping busy helping my good friend K.L. Teal (also known as T. Damon, author of “The Desperate Warrior and the Beast Who Walks Without Sound” in Perchance to Dream) with some editing work on her next novel, A Girl Named Dracula. Despite the title, this is not a paranormal book—if you want to know more, you’ll have to check the book out when it releases on October 9!
And speaking of friends’ upcoming releases, so many of my author buddies have new stuff coming out this month and next. For example:
• Jon Garett and Richard Walsh (authors of “Shoulders of Giants” in Perchance to Dream) helped put together this fantastic new anthology, Clarion Call, Vol. 1: Anarachy Rising
• Kyleen Valleaux, a long-time friend of mine, just began releasing her serial novel, Chronicles of the Garlon T’zen. Updates every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday!
• AND guess what? Darcie Little Badger’s long-anticipated webcomic, Shining Ascension, is finally upon us!! It’s so beautiful and cool, I can’t even deal! First page goes live on October 4!
That’s about it from me for now. I’ll post as soon as I have more news about Fourth World, and I also will have an announcement soon about a super-secret (unless you follow me on Twitter, in which case it’s not much of a secret at all) project that I’ll be starting on with a fellow author-friend in January. (Hint: anthology?!) See you all soon!