News

I have a couple of brand new stories in the upcoming charity anthology Baby Teeth. It’s the brainchild of Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray that’s filled with flash fiction that arose from this reddit post about creepy things kids say and do.

We’re running a crowdfunding campaign to support a print run, and if you’d like to get your hands on a paperback, ebook or audiobook, check out the PledgeMe campaign. Proceeds are going to Duffy Books in Homes, which provides free books to kids.

Note that all dollar amounts are in New Zealand dollars, which are worth less than US or Canadian dollars, so some of these are real bargains. And note also that there’s a special pledge level for non-Kiwi backers if you want a paper copy shipped from down under.

This weekend I will be at Au Contraire, the New Zealand national SF convention. Tomorrow morning, I’m kicking off the writers’ track of the con with a talk about choosing the right publishing path for you and later on tomorrow will be participating on the panel about crowdfunding. Otherwise, I’ll likely be found at talks about writing, video games or comics.

And I’ll be at the parties, of course.

Come say hi if you’re going to be there. And if anyone is up for a round of Cards Against Humanity at the pub, I’m so there!

As a human, with an imperfect brain, I often go through periods where I wonder why I bother wrangling words into some form of possibly meaningful structure. I mean, who cares, really? Blah.

However, I am extremely lucky in that there are people out there in the world who like my writing, and who like it enough or are naturally social enough to let me know (hi, everybody!). More than anything else (sales, awards nominations, download stats), these messages from fans are the primary external motivators I get for my writing, and I love them. LOVE THEM. *ahem*

One of the things people often say when they reach out is to enquire when there will be more. This is awesome, because wanting more is exactly what I want you to do. But. As a human, with an imperfect brain, sometimes I see “I can’t wait for your next book,” and think “OMG it’s been 18 months or whatever since I released my last book I’m a total has-been real writers can put out a book a year at least I’m such a fraud oh no I’m wasting my life.” Because I’m a human with an imperfect brain.

If I had a better brain, I’d remember that some stories take longer than others and that’s just the way it is. At the moment, I’m in the middle of working on several projects that fall into the “take longer” category. Thankfully, I recently ran across this post by Charles Stross about the six years it took him to write Accelerando.

I’m working on a novel that I began about 5 years ago, plus an Accelerando-like series of interconnected short stories which, as Stross points out in his piece, is harder than a straight novel. Plus, I’ve got another novel in edits and a stand-alone short story or two on the go. And the other day I got an idea for a… something that is going to involve a serious amount of research. Like, a university course-worth of research.

And that’s all okay. I want to be a quality over quantity writer, and that means that sometimes the quantity just isn’t there. I can live with that. I just have to remind my imperfect brain every once and again.

I have recently been rewatching one of my favourite shows from my youth: Magnum PI. I was expecting a nostalgic dose of epic cheese but instead I’ve been reminded about what it takes to craft a compelling series story – real characters.

I remembered Magnum PI as car chases, shootouts, witty repartee, aggressive moustaches and gorgeous scenery (I’m talking about Hawaii). It has all that, but so much more that I’d missed or forgotten.

What sets Magnum PI apart from other eighties action dramas is verisimilitude. Thomas Magnum isn’t a cardboard cutout of an action hero. Sure, he lives an amazing life as a permanent guest in a luxury estate in Hawaii. But he’s still scraping by trying to make a living — he’s always in debt to his friends and usually can’t afford to repair the damage he’s always doing to the borrowed Ferrari. He may be living the dream, but he’s also hustling for beer money.

The show might be named after him, but Magnum is the opposite of a one-man army. Not an episode goes by where he isn’t begging the help of his friends, one of whom often saves the day. If it weren’t for Rick, T.C., Higgins and the oft-forgotten Mac, Magnum wouldn’t have lasted a single episode. Just like real people, Magnum needs help. And just like real people, Magnum gets scared, beat up, makes mistakes and rarely gets the girl. His adventures may be improbable, but he feels real, and that’s why we like him.

Sure, the plots can be pretty contrived, and you really have to wonder what exactly hunky TM did to make gazillionaire invisible novelist Robin Masters let him live in his estate for free for eight seasons. This isn’t high art. But it goes to show that if you want to create a compelling story that resonates with an audience, you have to start with characters you can believe.

And a closet full of loud Aloha shirts doesn’t hurt, either.

Over at scribl.com, Fire. Escape. is back to being a free download, so now is a great time to go pick it up in preparation for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. But, because of their crowd-pricing algorithm, if a bunch of people take up that offer, the price will change.

So, if you are a Vogel voter, and you can’t get a free copy from scribl, shoot me an email at darusha@darusha.ca and I’ll send you an ebook copy in the format of your choice.

After Simon Petrie and Mary Victoria, I give you found poetry from one of the spam comments received here.

the grip for Chloe

catch sight of:
next to Chloe
(since sponge bag series)
is the love of various girls,
but conflicting new bags.

some people assume
the opulence of the grip
not consummate,
and it is ring, no aesthetic feeling.

no matter how–
some extremely like,
conceive of,
see.

by Chloe,
on occasions
include that lovely series
especially like, see.

rich doodle
in look of
the grip
sooner than
you think.

Loneliness. Solitude. Art.

Western culture has this image of the artist as toiling away alone in a garret. The reality, though, is that creativity thrives best when its practitioners are exposed to all kinds of other creative work. That’s why almost all advice to budding writers has, somewhere within in it, the phrase “Read a lot.”

But I’d argue that reading isn’t enough. My creativity flows much more when I exposing myself (hey-yo!) to visual art, music, dance, whatever. I’ve known this about myself for a long time, and being lucky enough to currently live in fairly cultural city, I do a decent job of getting out to the local museums, galleries and other arty happenings.

I realized recently, though, that I do a rubbish job of allowing myself to make time for art when I’m online. There’s no dearth of cool creative stuff out there – web comics alone could fill my days. But I have this mental block about wasting spending time on art online.

It’s because I think of it as frivolous, as wasting time. Which is just plain wrong.

Working at home on fiction projects, it can be hard to focus, so I have these rules for myself. No “fun” internet until X amount of “work” is done, that kind of thing. But the problem is that the line between work and fun is (thankfully) a lot blurrier than I sometimes think it is. Just as I’m finding that I have to allow myself to read fiction during “work” hours, I’ve realized that passing on that interesting looking link to some photographic project because it seems fun isn’t necessarily being more productive.

After all, the productivity I’m trying to achieve is creating my own art, and I don’t do that best in garret. Unless it’s a huge garret filled with other artists. Which would be cool. And probably unsanitary.

I am thoroughly stoked to be releasing the Plan B Magazine anthology today. If you like mystery or crime stories, go check it out. It’s got all thirteen stories that we’ll be running on Plan B over the next 6 months. And way cool cover art, to boot.

I want to go to Mars. For reals.

In case you don’t follow space news, there is an actual plan to send two people on a flyby of Mars in 2018. They are looking to recruit a couple for the 501 day voyage in a Dragon capsule-like craft. My partner, Steven, and I think we would be the perfect choice. Seriously.

Aside from the fact that we actually have real life experience with this kind of voyage (tl;dr – We’ve spent the past 5 years living and sailing on our boat, often alone at sea or in remote locations for weeks on end), how perfect would it be to have a science fiction author on a space mission designed specifically to be inspirational?

I don’t know how Inspiration Mars is planning to choose its crew, but public support can’t hurt. Feel free to share this post and our potential Space Crew resume to any and all social media you’d like. Let’s blur those lines between fiction and reality, shall we?

Today my newest venture, Plan B Magazine, officially launched! If you like mysteries, crime stories or suspense tales, check it out. There will be a new story every two weeks, thirteen stories in total for the first volume.

And coming soon: the whole baker’s dozen collected into an ebook anthology.