Happy Groundhog Day! What better way to celebrate the beginning of February than with free fiction?

Free fiction the first: The podcast of “The King of Rabbits and Moon Lake” is now up at Journey Into…, read fabulously by the talented Rajan Khanna. Listen, enjoy!

Free fiction the second: A bunch of us writers have come together to coordinate a massive book giveaway contest, “Crossing the Streams.” Check out my Book Giveaway page for details.

First and foremost, “Biba Jibun” is now up at Pseudopod for your free listening pleasure, read by the talented Kara Grace. Enjoy!

Next, laid out in quasi-scientific fashion, an update on my foray into releasing some of my previously published and out-of-print short fiction as e-books:

Continue reading »

The anthology Human for a Day, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Martin H. Greenberg (DAW Books), is now out with my story “Beneath the Silent Bell, the Autumn Sky Turns to Spring”! It’s available at bookstores and online booksellers such as Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com in print and as an ebook.

Also, the Nebula Award nominations are now open, and the Hugos are coming up, so herein the obligatory shameless pimpage for the short stories I’ve had published this year for your consideration:

• “Black Swan, White Swan” in anthology End of an Aeon, edited by Marti and Bridget McKenna (July, Fairwood Press), also produced as a podcast by PodCastle (listen to it for free!) and reprinted in my Mortal Clay, Stone Heart ebook collection.
• “Biba Jibun” in Apex Magazine issue #23 in April (read it for free!)
• “The Princess and the Golden Fish” in Cricket Magazine, serialized in the January through April issues.
• “Requiem Duet, Concerto for Flute and Voodoo” in Daily Science Fiction in September (read it for free!)
• “The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk” in podcast Drabblecast in August (listen to it for free!) for their Lovecraft Appreciation Month and reprinted as an ebook.

And a final plug in this plug-filled post, I’m running two deals for the month of December:

• $2.99 sale on my Returning My Sister’s Face ebook. (See this post for details.)
• Buy Mortal Clay, Stone Heart and get your choice of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” or “The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk” ebook for free. (See this post for details.)

Happy December! With the Prix Aurora Award win of The Dragon and the Stars anthology (containing my short story “Mortal Clay, Stone Heart”), it seemed like a propitious time to publish a new short story ebook collection. Introducing:

MORTAL CLAY, STONE HEART AND OTHER STORIES IN SHADES OF BLACK AND WHITE

Available for $2.99 at:

• Amazon for the Kindle
• B&N for the Nook
• Smashwords for Sony, iPad, Kobo, and other eReaders

And for the month of December, anyone who buys it can get their choice of my “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” or “The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk” ebook for free.

Just drop me an email with your Amazon, B&N, or Smashwords order/transaction number for Mortal Clay, Stone Heart and which ebook you’d like, and I’ll email you a coupon to download a complimentary copy from Smashwords in whatever format you like.

Cover art and table of contents:

Continue reading »

Meant to put this up on CyberMonday, but apparently I overdid the festivities over the weekend and instead spent Monday on the couch in a zombie-like state of aches and groans. So to celebrate the Thursday after CyberMonday, I’m offering my Returning My Sisters Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice ebook at
Smashwords for only $2.99 (normal price: $6.99).

Just take this link to RMSF’s Smashwords page and enter the coupon code below prior to completing checkout. Smashwords distributes ebooks in just about every format, including .mobi for Kindle.

Coupon Code: LA82X
Expires: January 1, 2012

Happy Holidays!

More information about RMSF.

Minor change in logistics for tomorrow’s reading at the GA Tech SF Symposium. I’ll have a little less time than I initially figured, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get through all of “The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon.” So rather than trying to rush through it, I decided instead to read the first chapters of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast.” Also, it seems more fitting to read actual, y’know, science fiction at a symposium on science fiction (versus fantasy).

Did a practice run last night to check my timing and pacing, and it occurred to me that I’ve never done a reading of any of my non-G-rated works before. The opening chapter of “Sinner” has sex, violence, murder, and expletives in it. And now I’m wondering if I can get through it without turning bright red and teeheeing like a schoolgirl.

So yeah, the rather aggressive butterflies I was sporting in my stomach have become mutant hippopotami.

Received the final schedule for this Thursday’s (11/17) science fiction symposium, The Shape of Things to Come: Science Fiction at Georgia Tech, hosted by The School of Literature, Communication and Culture (Skiles Building, Room 002). My reading with Joe McDermott and Chesya Burke is schedule for 4:30 pm-6:00 pm. I’ll be reading “The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon,” one of the stories from Returning My Sister’s Face.  

The symposium is free to the public and promises to have heaps of interesting subject matter and discussion topics. Hope to see folks there! 

Continue reading »

I’ve been bandying about the idea of self-publishing an ebook short story collection for a while but have been unmotivated to hash out the formatting and conversion details. Finally decided to get my act together and check out what all the cool kids have been talking about. Rolled up my sleeves and dug into all the how-to’s of converting a manuscript into the various ebook formats. Discovered it’s actually pretty straightforward if a bit persnickety.

So as an experiment and trial run, I’m publishing two ebooks, each for the low, low price of only $0.99, at Amazon (for the Kindle) and Smashwords (for the Nook, Sony reader, iPad, and other formats).

My Nebula Award-winning novelette, “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast”:

• Amazon
• Smashwords

And my short story, “The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk,” originally published as an audio podcast by Drabblecast for their Lovecraft tribute month:

• Amazon
• Smashwords

And as a bonus, all this month of November, anyone who buys “Sinner” will also get an ebook of “The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk” for free.

Just drop me an email with either your Amazon order number for “Sinner” or the very last line of text in the ebook (not the last line of the story but the last sentence of the back matter), and I’ll email you a coupon to download a complimentary copy of “The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk” ebook from Smashwords in whatever format you like.

More information and cover art:

Continue reading »

Alas, my five-day Halloween weekend is over, and it’s time to get back to work. “The Girl Who Drew Cats” is now officially a first draft. Still dwelling on whether I want to change a couple story elements, then I’ll do another editing pass and decide whether I want to send it out for critique. Been out of my various writers group short story critique loops for a while—due to spending the last couple years working on the novel. Sorta feel guilty submitting something for critique when I’ve been so inactive. Meh, will see how I feel after another editing pass.

Then it’s back to work on “The Art of Victory.” Hopefully, a few weeks distance will aid my ability to re-focus it…and also keep it from becoming a novella.

Finally, I gave myself until November to not fret, dwell upon, or panic about my forthcoming reading for the Georgia Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the 17th. It is now November, and I am in deep panic mode. Have no idea what to read. Leaning toward “The Tanuki-Kettle” or “The Tiger Fortune Princess.” Could also do “The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon.” I can conceivably read any of those in half an hour. Probably. But are fairy tales appropriate for a college science fiction symposium? My SF story options are all way too long to read in 30 minutes. Urg.

Decisions, decisions. And then pathological terror. Yup. Happy November.

Got an email from Debby Vetter, my Cricket editor, sending along the page proofs for “The Red String” and letting me know it’s scheduled to be published in next year’s February issue. Hurray! She also mentioned that this is the last story Cricket has in inventory from me and encouraged me to submit more.

Aside from the thrill of having an editor, y’know, invite me to submit something, it occurs to me that I’d been so focused on the novel effort for the last couple years that I simply haven’t been writing much children’s fiction. And I’ve missed it. Soon as I started poking around in that neglected corner of my creative process, got an immediate story idea, complete with title—”The Girl Who Drew Cats”—as well as a solid opening underway.

So I’m setting aside “The Art of Victory When the Game is All the World” for a bit. Probably good to put a little distance there anyway. “Art of Victory,” in addition to threatening to turn into a novella, is feeling a tad overextended and expansive, both focus- and story-wise. Couple weeks might be exactly what I need to regroup and rein things back under control with it.