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I’ve not yet read anything by Tamera MacNeil, but these Cheater’s Guides sound pretty cool.

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I’m writing a series of guides for SF writers who want to know about something but can’t, for whatever reason, go and find out for themselves first-hand. Things like, how does a sword smell, or what does it feel like to spin wool from a drop spindle? It’s something I wanted to do for a while, but haven’t been able to, and when I had the idea I was a little bit worried that it was yet another great idea that was going to end up on the scrapheap of great-but-un-do-able projects.
   
I get piles of fun, cool ideas, and I’m sure you do too, but in my case they too rarely see the light of day. In this case, the idea came from a panel I always try to attend whenever I get over to VCon, my local convention. It’s called Writing About Fighting and always a good time. The audience asks questions and the panel of writers and martial artists answers. Without a doubt the most common questions are about the gritty details – what does a sword smell like? Where do you get blisters when using a quarterstaff? I realized there was a dearth of access to the telling details that make writing believable, and thought, Wouldn’t it be great if someone did a writer’s reference for stuff like this? And then I thought, Well, why can’t I do that?
   
Then I got really excited. Then I got worried, because I’ve noticed my ideas sometimes follow a pattern that goes about like this:

Great idea > excitement > planning > realize I’m not an expert > give up > idea goes into the scrapheap

This time, though, instead of giving up after I realized there was so much I didn’t know, I started looking around for help. Did I know someone who could help me with the Cheater’s Guide to Swordplay? Sure I did. In fact, I knew two experts. Did I know someone who could help me on Cheater’s Guide to Medieval Homecrafts? Actually, I know a woman who has raised rare-breed sheep just so she can have just the right wool to spin. She also makes her own cheese. So that’s a yes.
   
This time, instead of giving up on my project, I started to ask around, and it turns out I know piles of people who do amazing things. More importantly, they were excited about being part of the project.
   
This is what I wanted to say in my Tell Me; I wanted to remind you that even though you personally might not be able to do a whole project on your own, I bet you know someone, or a few someones, who not only could help you, but would love to help you.
   
Those people might be friends, family, the local reference librarian, or an old science teacher. And that means those projects that seem big and frightening, well, they’re totally doable.
   
So go on, and get doing them!

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Tamera MacNeil is a Viable Paradise XVI alum who always has a project on the go. Her queer-friendly YA novella, Onsen, was released by JMS books in January 2013, and her most recent work of short fiction can be read for free over at Betwixt Magazine. Expect to see more about Cheaters’ Guides popping up @tammacneil on Tumblr in February!

You know, life was a lot easier when I didn’t know about awards like the Hugos or the Nebulas. It was an abstract thing. “Oh, there are awards and people win them. Cool.” Then, I started knowing the people who were nominated. “Oh, there are awards and my friends are up for them. Cool!” Then, I started being eligible and nominated for awards. Suddenly, it’s becoming, “There are these awards. How the hell am I good enough for them?”

I think I was lucky. The first two awards I was up for, I wasn’t at the awards ceremonies where I won. This vexed me. The third one, I made sure I was at and wanted to throw up the entire time. I won. I had a speech to read because a friend forced me to write one even though I was sure I wasn’t going to win. When I sat down, I realized I was starving. So, that’s what awards are like for me. Am I good enough? I’m going to throw up. Then, win or lose, I’m starving.

That being said, I still want to be nominated for awards and, yes, I want to win them. Winning is awesome. It really is. But, award season is stressful. People get cranky if you post about awards. People get cranky if you don’t post about awards. It’s really a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation.

And since I’m going to be condemned either way, here’s what’s eligible of mine for the Hugo this year:

•  “Iron Achilles Heel” – The New Hero II anthology – Stone Skin Press, February 2013
•  “An Infestation of Adverts” – Blue Shift Magazine, Issue #1 anthology – White Cat Publications, June 2013
•  “Dust Angels” – Beyond the Sun anthology – Fairwood Press, July 2013
•  “Lock and Key” – Shadowrun Returns kickstarter anthology – Catalyst Game Labs, July 2013
•  “The Price of Family” – Elementary (All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters) anthology – DAW, December 2013
•  “A Nightmare for Anna” – By Faerie Light anthology – Zombie Sky Press, December 2013

•  Children of Anu: Book Two of the Karen Wilson Chronicles, novel – Apocalypse Ink Productions, June 2013

•  Coins of Chaos anthology – EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Editor, October 2013 [Short form editor]

A couple years back, Jason Schmetzer, the fiction editor for battlecorps.com, asked me if I wrote stories about “big stompy ’Mechs.” My answer was an unhesitating “No.” Jason, not to be denied, asked me if I could crash a big stompy ’Mech and then write him a story. I thought about it and said that I thought I could… if I could think of the right story.

It took two years and some back and forth between me and Jason to hammer out the idea for The Nellus Academy Incident – a YA Battletech webserial about 8 cadets and a General in a PR event gone horribly, horribly wrong. I figured it would be about 25 episodes of about 2000 words each and was designed to go up on a weekly basis. That’s not exactly what happened but, in the end, the webserial was 25 episodes and almost 60,000 words.

I was surprised and delighted beyond words when Jason told me that The Nellus Academy Incident was going to be packaged up as a novel for general sale. This wasn’t my intent when I wrote the serial but, wow, it looked like I had written a YA novel without planning on it.

Yesterday, I got the cover. The book will come out towards the end of January. Isn’t it pretty?

As a side note, I do know what I’d write for a sequel if Jason asked for another serial for battlecorps.com.

Danielle Ackley-McPhail is an author and editor I admire. I’ve shared a TOC with her, edited her, and been edited by her. Almost all of it has been military fiction. It’s always interesting to get an inside perspective on how people get into cultures they’ve not personally experienced.

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As a writer, there is nothing more gratifying than successfully immersing yourself into another psyche so outside of your own. In becoming another person…if only on paper…and having an audience believe in that character. Have them connect and empathize and even cry for that character. It is a humbling experience.

I recently wrote a story called “Brother” for the Defending the Future anthology, Dogs of War. My story is from the perspective of a soldier horribly scarred by war, both physically and emotionally. That soldier has retreated inside of himself and used the extremes of his military psychological training to defend the tattered remains of his spirit.

It probably will not surprise you—particularly if you know me—that I have never been to war. I have never been in the military. My closest connection is being the youngest child of a military man who fought in several wars, and was scarred by all of them. A child who never experienced the military lifestyle. Heck, by the time I was aware of my surroundings I barely experienced my father at all, not until I was much older. Though not consciously, I suppose you could say that my father was a template for my character. Now, looking back, I can see where the more subtle mindset and defenses my father had were amplified in this story. At the time of writing, though, all I had to draw on was the most basic understanding of the military mindset, post traumatic stress disorder, and a bit of research on the internet to flesh things out. And yet the words flowed. The character told his own story and showed me a glimpse of the trauma left by combat.

Apparently I have a very fertile imagination. Or perhaps I truly channeled some unnamed soldier I will never know beyond the words of my story, because I showed it to the soldiers I know. I showed it to medical personnel familiar with my topic. I’ve read it to audiences several times over. And each time I was humbled at the impact of my words.

This may sound like boasting, but please, be assured that is not so. I am in awe at the gift I have been given to touch people with words and as with anything given as a gift, I am not responsible for the outcome. What I have written in “Brother” is a product of inspiration that is beyond my control. It is not something I planned out to write. It was not something I could possibly write from my own experience. I have no doubt that creativity is touched by divine inspiration and I have learned that through my fiction I can be many people, to many people, and none of them have a single thing to do with who I really am. It is an amazing feeling to be given a gift like that, and to be fortunate enough to share it with the world. I certainly count my blessings and look forward to where my muse will lead me next.

The first time I heard about Eel River, Shannon wrote me a lovely, creepy story for my anthology CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE URBAND KIND called “The Hippie Monster of Eel River.” I was intrigued. Now, Shannon talks about using her own life as inspiration for a horror story even though her life wasn’t horrific.

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My Life Is Not A Horror Story…So Why Is My Novel?

When I was five, my parents bought seventy-two acres of raw land in the middle of nowhere, intending to establish a self-sufficient, back-to-the-land commune. They sold all our worldly goods and moved us out of the big, corrupt city. We had no electricity or indoor plumbing in our one-room A-frame cabin with a loft. Our land was twenty-five miles from the nearest “big” town; a little crossroads with a store and a gas station was ten miles away. (Though we never shopped there, because they didn’t like hippies.)

It was just us the first year—my parents, me, and my one-year-old brother. He slept in a crib which took up half the army surplus tent we lived in while my dad built the cabin. Mom cooked over a campfire till we moved indoors, whereupon she upgraded to a wood cook stove. Marvelous things came from that stove! I can still remember perfect lemon meringue pies, though of course, mostly we ate more basic Seventies Vegetarian Hippie Fare—lots of tofu, cheese, and broccoli.

I played alone a lot, outside whenever I could, reading when the weather kept me indoors. My favorite thing to do was construct little villages where tiny ceramic animals would drive around in Matchbox cars and visit each other. The world in my head was very social, even as my life was quite isolated and quiet. (It’s no mystery to me at all why I became a writer!) I was a shy, maybe even spooky child, awkward around people, lonely but also content to be solitary.

Yet it was an idyllic time. The land was beautiful, and I had absolute freedom to roam it. We had a gorgeous stretch of beach on the river—the Eel River—and, once I learned how to swim, you could hardly get me out of the water. I loved our goats, and our dogs; I even liked the other people who came to live on the land, even though it never really turned into the functional commune my parents had dreamed about.

So, how did all this turn into the horror novel Eel River?

It’s a funny process, how a story becomes Story. Most writers have had the experience of trying to tell some amazing story about their lives—only to have it not work at all, narratively. All sorts of interesting things happened on the land. But when I tell you about it as it happened, it’s just a series of details, without any coherent meaning.

I knew that I needed a Story to tie together the details of my story. So I thought about what it meant to me, to grow up in such an odd environment. I had to learn a lot of resourcefulness and self-sufficiency early on; I saw adults differently than most of the other kids at school did. I had to learn how to straddle the divergent worlds of elementary school with redneck farmers’ kids and my home with pot-smoking hippies. I was sort of an outsider everywhere, observing the different tribes.

In writing the novel, I wanted a self-sufficient, spooky little girl as the protagonist. Naturally, she needed something huge to challenge her. Something that threatened not only her, but her home and everyone she cared about.

I created a monster.

And once I had those elements, set in a place I was utterly familiar with, the Story just flowed. But not back to where it started…rather, forward to something new. And that ‘something new’ was a horror novel: Eel River.

I hope you enjoy the “trip.”

I’m biased about this one. Not only is Janine pretty spiff. Jean Rabe is the editor of this already funded anthology… and a space opera story from me is part of the stretch goals. I love the idea of Athena’s Daughters. I really do. This is what Janine had to say about the Kickstarter and the need for good role models.

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Let me tell you about my newest project that I’m super excited about! It’s called Athena’s Daughters and it’s a science fiction and fantasy anthology completely done by women – all the artists, authors, the editor, everyone involved is a woman, and all the stories all have a female lead.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are wonderful mediums to teach our youth (and our adults), to expand our horizons, and encourage thought and imagination. But I still see a lack of women as leads out there*, and I think it’s very important for children (and adults!) to have strong female role models in their lives.

That’s what inspired Athena’s Daughters.

As for my own story in the anthology, “Millie”, it’s about a modern day Marine pilot (helicopter pilot based on an old friend of mine from my flight school days) who has a chance encounter with a very familiar time traveling Aviatrix (have you ever wanted to know what really happened at Howland Island?).

Oh, and the introduction to the anthology was written by retired astronaut (and more awesome, SHE’S A PILOT!) Pam Melroy!

So to say I’m just a little bit excited about this anthology would be a massive understatement.

The kickstarter for Athena’s Daughters has just launched, and you can get the eBook (and a bunch of extras for free!) for only $5.

Even if you’re not interested in the project yourself, but think you might have friends or family who might, I’d really appreciate it if you could make a mention of it on your social media or through your email connections. The link to the Kickstarter (order) page is http://tinyurl.com/athenasD.

So in short, awesome women doing awesome things – check it out!

WATTPAD link for a free preview of my story “Millie”: http://www.wattpad.com/32027002-athena%27s-daughters-millie

*Yes, I know we have The Hunger Games, Divergent, my own War of the Seasons trilogy, along with many more female led stories out there that all totally rock, but it’s still a dearth compared to male leads.

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BIO: Janine K. Spendlove is a KC-130 pilot in the United States Marine Corps. In the Science Fiction and Fantasy World she is primarily known for her best-selling trilogy, War of the Seasons. She has several short stories published in various anthologies alongside such authors as Aaron Allston, Jean Rabe, Michael A. Stackpole, Bryan Young, and Timothy Zahn. She is also the co-founder of GeekGirlsRun, a community for geek girls (and guys) who just want to run, share, have fun, and encourage each other. A graduate of Brigham Young University, Janine loves pugs, enjoys knitting, making costumes, playing Beatles tunes on her guitar, and spending time with her family. She resides with her husband and daughter in Washington, DC. She is currently at work on her next novel. Find out more at JanineSpendlove.com.

It’s my birthday and I want you to make a fuss over me. I really do. I want you to buy yourself (or a friend) one of my books. If you’ve already got some of my books, I really want you to write a review on Amazon about the book—good or bad (preferably good). This is what I want for my birthday. Buy a book, make a fuss, give me a hug, tell me you love me.

Caller Unknown (Karen Wilson #1) – Amazon | Apocalypse Ink Productions

Children of Anu (Karen Wilson #2) – Amazon | Apocalypse Ink Productions

In a Gilded Light – Amazon | Dark Quest Books

The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting – Amazon | Dark Quest Books

Industry Talk – Amazon | Apocalypse Ink Productions

The Little Finance Book That Could – Amazon

Guest Blog: I talk about why Human for a Day is my favorite anthology edited so far.

Interview: Pat Flewwelling (who has the coolest last name) interviewed me for Nine Day Wonder with an editor’s focus.

Interview: Dave Gross interviewed me for his Creative Colleagues blog series. We talked about keeping a schedule and balancing editing versus writing and RPGs.

Review: A starred review in Publishers Weekly – Elementary: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters – I have a story in this set in the wild west called “The Price of Family.” It’s a dark story.

Recommendation: Broodhollow. A lovely, creepy webcomic by Kris Straub set in the 1930s. You should start at the beginning. It’s got a subtle wrongness to it on top of the outright horror.

My ebooks from Apocalypse Ink Productions are on sale for $0.99. If you get the physical copies, all domestic shipping is free. It’s a pretty good deal.

If you prefer Amazon:

Caller Unknown, Karen Wilson Chronicles, Book 1
Children of Anu, Karen Wilson Chronicles, Book 2
Industry Talk: : An Insider’s Look at Writing RPGs and Editing Anthologies, non-fiction

I finally have the title of the Karen Wilson Chronicles, Book 4. It took a bit of doing and digging and thinking and playing with words.

Originally, I wanted to call it something like “Dreamstalker” or “Dreamstalkers” because it’s about nightmares becoming real. But, frankly, that’s a boring name and doesn’t really tell you what I want you to know about the book. Thus, I have a new title: CHIMERA INCARNATE.

Chimera is a mythical monster. But it is also a “an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially :  an unrealizable dream.”

Incarnate means “invested with bodily and especially human nature and form.”

CHIMERA INCARNATE is perfect for a novel about nightmares that can both kill you while you sleep or enter this reality through the unprotected mind.

I am beyond happy. This is the exact right novel title. It was part of the reason I was doing so much fighting with the outline. Now that I have the title, the words are flowing.