Tag: pen names

Alecia in the Mechwurm in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 4 Comments

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #59
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #59
My short story “Alecia in the Mechwurm” has just come out in the latest issue (#59) of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. ASIM, along with Aurealis, carries the banner for Australian (and NZ, and well, I guess all of Oceania) Science Fiction. This is my second story with them (following “I am Nano” a couple of years ago). This issue is edited by the inestimable David Kernot, and I’m honored to be included in his issue.

“Alecia…” is another story under the Michael Shone penname (probably the last), and is set in the same universe (i.e. Mechwurms) as last year’s “The Flower Garden” which appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of The Colored Lens. If you’ve read that story, “Alecia…” is a slightly different tone – more hard sci-fi compared to “The Flower Garden’s” more literary leaning.

Interesting side-note: also on the contents page is Australian writer Steve Cameron, with whom I’ve shared a previous contents page, just this year in Outposts of Beyond.

A quarter million

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

wing cover 3Halfway through the year and I’m halfway through my wordcount goal: 250,000 new words written from January first through to June thirtieth (251,055 according to the spreadsheet). This means just another quarter million by December thirty-first to hit that half-million word goal.

I’m writing fast and learning heaps as I go. In general I think my stories are getting better (sometimes it feels like I’ve written a dud, but usually I feel better about the next one).

No novels this year – that’s all short/long stories. Next year will be the year of the novel(s) – aiming for the same word count, but far fewer stories and getting those new novels and sequels written (yes, finally I will get The Deluge: The Hidden Dome part 2 published).

At the moment I’ve got more than forty stories circulating around publishers and that’s getting a bit unweildy, so I’m going to pull that back to about 10 as they filter back and self/indie publish the others as I go.

So far I’ve published 150,000 new words for 2013 (in various guises, under various pen names), and about 30,000 of those have been published in magazines (most of whom have paid actual money), and the rest is self/indie-published. I have several unpublished works (including novels) that need some proofing, correcting and so on. I have a different pattern of time availability coming up in a couple of weeks: I should be able to start getting to those then.

And right now I’m taking Dean Wesley Smith’s online lecture on pen names – I might just be shifting all those nom-de-plume stories over to reside under the Sean Monaghan byline (like those Len Stone stories I’ve been secretly publishing for a while now).