My pacy sci fi adventure novel Hunting Shellot is now available in print and ebook.
Cody Wexland polices the galaxy, tracking down smugglers, pirates and brigands. Tough work. Even tougher breaking in a new team at the same time. The young group lacks experience, but they more than make that up in sheer enthusiasm and intelligence.
Good thing, because the most brutal pirate out there sets his sights on taking down Cody and her team.
At any cost.
Deep space action from the award-winning author of The Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures.
I’ll be at Geysercon in Rotorua Queen’s Birthday Weekend, Saturday May thirty-first and Sunday June first. If you happen to be there, please stop me and say hello.
I am on two panels. The first I’m the moderator (so hopefully I’ll shut the face up and let the panel members do the talking), and the other I’m a panel member.
I’m moderating the panel To Boldly Go: Ships in SFF featuring Kodi Washere, Dave Hadwin, Carleton Chinner, and Guest of Honour Alena Van Arendonk. Fortunately, having been in touch with the others, they know their spaceships and their SF way better than me. I feel privileged to be along for the ride.
I’m a panel member on Scripts to Screen. So I’m relatively inexperienced on this one, so we’ll see how it goes. I offered to be on the panel since I have licensed the film rights to one of my stories. That’s exciting, though I am very conscious that it’s a long way from rights to sitting in a theatre watching a finished film. I’m excited by the director and his energy for the project, but it is very early days right now. We’ll see.
That story is “Ventiforms” which appeared in the January/February issue of Asimov’s. The story is available as a pre-order ebook, with full release on the first day of conference. From Amazon and various other retailers. Also available as a nice little print book on Amazon too (actually available right now, since I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to do a pre-order with the print versions). I will have a few print copies with me at the conference.
The other two panelists, Jean Gilbert (moderator) and Claire McKenna, have far more experience than I do. Expect starry eyes from me there.
I have been a fan of film since I was a kid. One of my day job bosses years ago loved film too and he had this cool way of rating a film. Any number from one to fifty-two. A film with a rating of fifty-two was for films that people who see a film a week should see. A rating of one was for films that people who go to a film a year should go and see. As in, this is the ‘film of the year’.
Me, I usually saw more than fifty films in a year. And I still do. The arrival of Netflix has upped that number. Whew.
So I like to think that I have some understanding of the process of short story/novel to script to film. As in a novel is a different medium to film, so things don’t necessarily work interchangeably.
The example I like to use is how in Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the entire third act of the film is an extrapolation of a single sentence in the book, in effect.
Similarly, whole tracts of novels’ storylines are left out of films based on them.
As well as “Ventiforms”, there will be copies of some of my other books on sale at the convention bookstore. And please do introduce yourself if you’re there.
As I continue to attempt the business of getting a handle on having indie publications, I’m starting to get a rhythm beyond the haphazard. Over the last few years I feel like I’ve certainly gotten a handle on the writing side of things – writing every day, finishing everything I start, and so on – but getting that material out sometimes gets away on me.
Last year I managed just eight publications. Four novels and four longer stories (some of those in the image above). I didn’t even manage a single collection of those stories, which would have bee kind of easy.
Ah, well.
So this year I’m challenging myself to publish 26 items. One every two weeks. So far I’m on target. Just. Twelve weeks into the year and I’ve managed to publish six items. Two novels (albiet one being the shorter Raven Rising), and four longer stories.
Some of the 26 publications will be collections, which helps, since some of the stories will have already been formatted ready to go. I will try to make sure that each collection has one unique story in, in some cases they might be mostly unique.
I have enough writings ready to go to keep this up for a while, but at some point I’ll run out unless I keep writing. Well, keeping writing is the easy part. Keeping this up might push me somewhat.
Working on learning how to write better blurbs too. And to make better covers. And to get my website looking better. And to do some courses. And to get more things published in the professional magazines. And to just be a better writer.
Some year. Looking forward to it really.
Books so far this year at my Smashwords page, or on Amazon. Also on iBooks and so on…
Interesting side note, yes, the Lord of the Rings films, and related items show up on an Amazon search for my name. I figure because a couple of the hobbits were played by Sean Astin and Dominic Monaghan. As if I didn’t get enough Lord of the Rings already, what with living in New Zealand 🙂
Cool to watch the International Space Station track across the NZ sky this evening with a tiny point of light tracking it from not far behind. Realized that it was of course the SpaceX Dragon capsule heading in to dock. I didn’t take that picture (!), that’s from the NASA site. That’s pretty cool.
Nice views first thing of the crescent moon, with Venus nearby. I pushed my camera’s zoom to the max for that second photo. Pleased with the shot – looks like a planet, rather than just a circle (I’m sure that’s more to do with my camera’s quirkiness than Venus’s surface).
My story “Concentration” has just come out in print in the Autumn 2015 issue of Landfall.
Landfall is New Zealand’s longest running literary journal – around since 1947.
“Concentration” is a surreal dreamloop story about trying to reconnect to the world, while everyone around you is trying to disconnect… or something like that. It’s kind of a cross-over literary story, with hints of science fiction (I couldn’t resist, you know?).
Anyway, I’m thrilled to be in Landfall again, and pleased to be sharing the pages with the likes of Owen Marshall, Karen Zelas and Emma Neale.
My novelette “The Whalefall” has just appeared in the Autumn 2014 issue of The Colored Lens. The story of a woman searching for her father lost at sea, on a distant planet where the sea life comes somewhat larger than here on Earth.
Cool to be sharing the contents page with, among others, David Kernot from across the ditch. David’s also one of the editors for issues of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine – in fact edited the issue that came out a couple of months ago with my story “Alecia in the Mechwurm”.
My story “The Helmet” has just come out in the August issue of Black Denim Lit. There’s been some delay with the issue (BD is still pretty new), but it’s nice to see it out now. “The Helmet” is a hard science fiction story set on a ship in the Kuiper Belt.
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Baz liked it out this way, among the Kuiper belt planets. He imagined the vacuum quieter, the light dimmer, the drift through the cosmos more peaceful. They’d left Chuapa behind a day ago, and were six days out from Sarinne. Lilly’d come to Baz with another offer. Come out with her ice gathering for three months and she’d forgive his debt.
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My deep space adventure story “The Old Fighting Goose” appears in the latest of the Beyond The Stars series, subtitled Unimagined Realms.
