Overthinking Myself to Distraction

I signed up last night for Robert J. Sawyer's A Thematic Approach to Science Fiction workshop. I'm looking forward to this in a big way, as he's been one of my favorite writers for longer than I care to think about just now. An unfortunate side effect is that I've been over-preparing outlines and stuff all day, and so I don't have any new story parts to post tonight.  ​

The good news is the workshop is at the end of the month, so hopefully soon I'll become that much better at what I'm trying to do.​

I'm not sure what form the workshop takes, but it's several hours long so it should be fun to find out. I've heard nothing but good things about RJS' workshops, and it's been a LONG time since I did one.​

A Weird Night

​A little while back I bought an advertisement on the Weird Things Podcast hosted by Andrew Mayne, Justin R. Young and Brian Brushwood. I've been listening to the show for some time now, it's fantastic if you're fascinated by the... er, well, the weird things in our world. The things that sound like fiction, but aren't.

Anyway, I expected a regular ad read; I supplied the copy, and generally they just read it and thank the sponsor and off they go. ​Tonight I listened to the episode in which my ad appeared, and I got more than I bargained for. They did the ad read perfectly (aside from a name issue, which they corrected on their own,) but then in a really nice twist, they got into a really good discussion about the state of indie ebook publishing today and how open the field is.

This was definitely more than I bargained for and more than I paid for, and I'm incredibly grateful to them for talking about my site so extensively in the episode. It happened because Andrew Mayne is also an indie author who has done incredibly​well for himself at it over the last year or so; he's published a good 5 or 6 books in the last year (yikes!) and one of them, Angel Killer, is currently the #15 book in all of the UK Amazon Kindle store.

Both Andrew and Brian have done a lot to inspire my choice to seriously write over the last year so it meant a lot to me to be the focus of a cool conversation like that. I don't want to oversell it--it's not like they devoted the episode to it or anything--but I strongly urge you to check both of them out over at Amazon, as well as on the Weird Things podcast itself.

• Andrew Mayne Amazon Author Page
• Brian Brushwood Amazon Author Page​

Justin doesn't have an author page, but he and Brian released a best-selling comedy album, Night Attack, which you should definitely check out if you're into weird comedy. I don't know how else to describe it. Be warned that it does contain explicit content.

I know you're all at Dragon*Con having a blast, but thank you for making my night.​

Also, Brian, we will have words over your outing me and my connection to the secret serpent clan of the McLeods, sir! ;)​ 

When Computer Problems Strike

​So a few days back I did something to my computer and now I'm having some semi-serious issues with it. I'm pretty sure it's nothing I can't fix, but it's making writing difficult; even typing this message is a pain. I've got some heavy-duty diagnostics running that are eating system resources and making everything else on this machine slow to a crawl.

As a result, I can't write, at least not on this computer, and this is the only computer where I have my writing environment set up. I have no idea how long the diagnostics will take, nor how long the fix will take when they're done, but if I'm not set up and working again by tomorrow evening, I'll make alternate arrangements to get some writing in.​

Just to be clear, this is not a cautionary tale of the "do as I say, not as I do" type; I do​ have backups of all my important files and everything, both locally and offsite, so nothing is lost.If it came to that, my habit of posting everything here on this site means that Fiction Improbable itself is a viable backup for most things!

So remember, do as I do. Back your stuff up. You never know when you're going to need it.​ Hopefully I won't need it this time.

Prices eBook is Now Available Free

The free Prices ebook is posted; it's an anthology of the first stories I wrote and published here. The 6 stories cover the multi-generational struggle of Altman Dolet and his heirs against the Conclave, a shadowy organization intent on maintaining their position as the gatekeepers of all higher learning in the lands.

This is a draft copy; a preview, intended to let you read the stories as they currently exist in a much nicer format than having to read them on the website. They are not finished works, and so this book will not be on Amazon just yet! I have to get them all edited up and whatnot first.

I put this together as a result of fan requests, so thank you everyone for the feedback!

Prices Free eBook Coming Soon

I've spent some time today working on an ebook anthology of ​Prices, the collection of short proto-Steampunk stories I started writing way back in October 2011. They also form some of the background of the world that my current The Price of Entanglement story is set in.

Having done an ebook once, this one is going VERY quickly, but I should note that this is an ebook compilation of the current state of the rough drafts. It is NOT a finished work and will NOT be going on Amazon's Kindle store until I've done some extensive rewriting on the various stories.​

Like the Determination ebook, I'm including an excerpt in this one, this time of The Price of Entanglement​; it seemed fitting. I should have the Prices ebook available tomorrow.