Call to Action

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Preditors & Editors Reader’s Poll

Doomsday Chronicles

Hey did you know that Doomsday Chronicles and consequently my short story GOAT is in the running for this year’s Critter’s Best Anthology? At the time of this writing, we’re ranked #2, right behind a horror anthology and there are only a few days left before they’ll call it.

This is another example of a place a single reader can have an enormous impact on a writer’s career. We only produce so much over the course of any year and simply being nominated is a big win, but the award accolades can make or break any cover.

Please take a moment and register your opinion.

Critter’s/P&E Annual Readers Poll – http://critters.org/predpoll

Anthology Poll – http://critters.org/predpoll/antho.shtml

 

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2017 Awards Consideration Post

I know, you’re wondering “What can I do to help this author person I know?” Well, I published a bit in 2016 and some of it is eligible for an award.

Best Short Story

Best Novelette

There’s more, but those are the big one’s I bled for. All of them are science fiction of one sort or another and these are the stories I’d ask that you consider when you make your nominations and vote.

As always, feel free to pass along any story you enjoyed to a friend or leave a review. As soon as I cover it, GOAT will be published on its own along with its nearly complete companion story MONITOR.

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Alt.Chronicles: Legacy Fleet ARCs

UPDATE: I have a single ARC left. If you’re interested in reading and reviewing this excellent collection please let me know right away.

I have in my hand three hot copies of an upcoming release ALT.Chronicles: Legacy Fleet, a Samuel Peralta anthology debuting later this month. One of my stories, written within Nick Webb’s universe, is featured in this collection, and this means that I have three Advanced Reader Copies to pass around. Three.

ALTCHRONLF

So, my Sunday morning dilemma is this: I’d like to pass these around to all my patrons, but I can only give them to three people. It’s imperative that I tell you that these copies come with strings attached. Per Samuel, “ARC readers must try their best to provide honest reviews for the launch day (Aug 18) on Amazon.com or shortly after. You can choose those readers however you like, but keep in mind that we do want to set an expectation that these are reviewer copies, and not freebies.”

I’m giving Patreon patrons first crack at these, but if you’re interested in reading my story LUMP as well as shorts from fourteen other authors, speak up in the comments. Depending on the response I see on Patreon I’ll mail you a copy in the e-reader format of your choice.

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Chronicle World’s Legacy Fleet

LegacyFleet

Yeah, this is an announcement with a cover reveal. Coming in August from The Future Chronicles and the universe of Nick Endi Webb‘s bestselling trilogy Constitution, Warrior, and Victory.

CHRONICLE WORLDS: LEGACY FLEET

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Chronicle Worlds: Legacy Fleet is Samuel Peralta, Nick Endi Webb, Therin Knite, Dave Monk Fraser Adams, Peter Cawdron, Patrice Fitzgerald, Kat Fieler, Jon Frater, Kev Heritage, Ralph Kern, Joseph Lewis, James McCormick (J.E. Mac), Felix R Savage, Will Swardstrom, Matthew Alan Thyer, Christopher Valin

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IOTD

Jim C. Hines posted this a few minutes ago and I’m tripping over my keyboard with jealousy, why didn’t I think of this?

I’m thinking about trying to do a weekly blog post highlighting some of the positive and amazing things being done by various folks in the SF/F community. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how many wonderful, kind-hearted, generous people there are in our geeked-out slice of the world.

Take Pat Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraiser. Pat has poured so much time and energy into Worldbuilders. (Yes, I know some of you would rather he poured all of that time into writing, but none of us can write all the time.) In the past seven years, Worldbuilders has raised more than $3.5 millionfor Heifer International, helping to reduce hunger and poverty in the world.

Or look at conventions like Windycon, where fans worked to raise $753 for the Alzheimer’s Association, Greater Illinois Chapter.

So I need your help. Email me at jchines -at- sff.net (or use the Contact Form) and tell me about people or groups in fandom doing good stuff. I’ll do my best to research and write them up, with links and pics and maybe even a quick interview or quote or something. And we can try at least once a week to recognize that yeah, at its worst, SF/F fandom can be a hot, flaming mess … but at our best, we are Frakking Awesome.

Yeah, the Hugos have once again been sabotaged by poo-gobbling attention trolls. Yes, gigantic media mechanisms are once again shining light on the unwashed underbelly of the SFF community giving the broader world the impression that we’re all bigots or morons or both.

We are better than this. Let’s draw attention to the good that we do. Well played Mr. Hines.

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A Ubiquitous Award Post

Welcome to the new year. It is that time again, and 2015 was a pretty good year for me as a writer. Things got published. Things are eligible for awards.

Essays

Invisible 2 Cover-Full-689x1024 I contributed an essay to Jim Hines’ second annual anthology Invisible 2: Personal Essays on Representation in SF/F. He informs me that the collection is eligible for the Best Related Work.

Flash Fiction and Short Stories

"Walk to School"

“Walk to School”

Dispatches from the Future: B-list: Over the course of the year, I wrote a growing collection of flash fiction. As part of his recovery from kidney surgery and Inktober my friend and Army buddy Jeffrey Witty completed a illustrations for many of them.

  • I believe that this collection of stories would qualify for either Best Short Story or Best Fanzine. There are fourteen episodes within the collection, all of them are under 2,000 words (they’ve always been freely available on Wattpad).
  • Jeff’s adroit illustrations are also eligible for Best Fan Artist.  His ink work is really quite excellent; as the author, I can’t tell you how nice it is to see your words looking back at you.

Tokyo Yakuza #11: Mob Dance (6,027 words) qualifies for Best Short Story. This was a fun little project done as part of an independent tabletop game release.

Novellette

“Ser Pan Comido”

Galaxy Chronicles: Ser Pan Comido (9,891 words) is arguably my best and most popular published work of 2015. I really enjoyed collaborating with Samuel Peralta and Jeff Seymour and the Amazon sales boost this anthology produced was amazing to witness (my Amazon Author rank peaked at #71 in Science Fiction … Wow!).

  • Despite my self-doubt surrounding this story, it has done remarkably well. The collection received some excellent reviews and my contribution was called out more than once.
  • Jeff’s approach to editing was a pleasure and I hope to repeat the experience with some longer works that are on the way. If you’re filling out your ballot and need suggestions for Best Editor please consider Jeff and/or Sam.

Summary

That’s it for me (and the many people that I collaborated with last year). If you’re running behind and can only nominate one work may I suggest that you consider sending Jeffrey Witty to the vanguard. His work is good, and I’d love to motivate him to do more. He’s been secretly scripting and illustrating The Big Red Buckle and I’d love to light a fire under his can to get this done in 2016.