Tag Archives: writer squeee!!!

A snippet from “Going Gently”

Um. Complications are happening today…here’s a little teaser. I swear, I didn’t know this was going to happen….

************

“That’s a relief.” Bess’s eyes narrowed and she stared at the globe. “Sarah. You’re worried about Kylee. Why?”

“If I could feel her so intensely before birth, what are these aliens going to think if they’re at all engaged in the virtual world? She’s got power in virtual. Untrained, unfocused, but she’s strong enough to get the attention of potential predators. We know the Nest claims that Earth’s early transmissions and virtual presence attracted them. What if Kylee is drawing these new aliens? What if they want to use her like the Nest wanted to do to you and Alex?”

Bess’s brown face went ash-gray. “I thought this was the kind of thing the Nest protected us from.”

“So did I.” Sarah’s form flickered and jagged flashes of green pixels pulsed from the top to the bottom of the hologlobe. “What’s up with the globe?”

Something slugged Melanie’s thoughts in virtual, an oppressive and hard blow almost as strong as her stroke had initially felt. She flailed back against the pressure and it eased. Her panic ebbed as the heaviness faded and she realized it wasn’t another stroke. Her head still throbbed but now she could identify the weight as a strong virtual presence.

*********

So yeah. I’m going to make the rough draft version of this available to my newsletter subscribers on September 5th. It may not be finished, or I may decide that I’ve reached the end for now (I do plan on coming to a stopping place), then come back and revisit it in October/November to have it out as a full release in December.

Yummy. This story is getting to be very interesting…..

Comments Off on A snippet from “Going Gently”

Filed under Netwalk Sequence

Guest post today!

I’m writing about writing and moving today over at Grand Central Arena.

Squee! Go over and say hi!

(and yes, I promise to write a blog that isn’t all Netwalk’s Children and Pledges of Honor. We have just had a blip in the world of life).

Comments Off on Guest post today!

Filed under writer promo stuff

Proof that even careful planning doesn’t constrain a novel…

So I created this lovely six page matrix to track the actions of my characters. I thought I had every possible ramification and consideration under control.

Yeah. Right. I just hit 20k words today.

They’re just getting sneakier about introducing whole new plot threads.

Here, just to tease you and out of context, is a snippet from the 3000-some words I wrote today.

***********

“Montcrief, is this true?” Diana demanded. “Zoë, has he filed Contract on Melanie and Andrew?”

“See it for yourself,” Andrew spat out, flipping a hologlobe cube onto the floor in front of them. The hologlobe shimmered open, and a short clip of Troubadour Security confronting Do It Right Security at the first entrance to the compound played.

“We demand entrance to Do It Right under Contract,” the lead Troubadour Security said.

“Entrance disallowed.” The lead Security bristled. “No Contract filing has been released to us.”

“This is a Concealed Filing.”

“No it’s not.” Sarah identified this Security by voice as Angela Garcia, Melanie’s Head of Security. “Or if it is, it’s highly illegal.”

Is that Nik Morley leading the DIR troop? Sarah studied the clip closer. She could have sworn Morley stood behind Melanie–he was the authorized Courts Security representative from Do It Right. But the leader–no, the Second behind him–moved like Morley. Not Morley, though. Too short, shoulders slightly thinner. She couldn’t see faces through the helmets of course, and ventured a small datastring to see if she could tease an ID out of the clip.

Chaos erupted in the vid, ending with the Troubadour Security team under restraint. Several bodies lay strewn around the entrance, but Sarah noticed they were moving slowly. Stun, not kill, thank God. Montcrief. You idiot.

<Holy Mother of God he did do it,> William speeched. <Idiot. Fool.>

She agreed with William. <Montcrief should know better.>

“Then I demand–“ Diana began.

“Mother. Stop.” Melanie raised her left hand again. “We’re the ones offended against.”

“We demand full sanctions for unauthorized Contract actions,” Andrew said. His voice dropped lower, full of menace. “Or has the Executive Council declared war on Do It Right? Because if it has, then I tell you, I will consider any action you take against Do It Right to be an action against Stephens Reclamation as well.”

Go, kids, go, Sarah thought.

Comments Off on Proof that even careful planning doesn’t constrain a novel…

Filed under Netwalk's Children

Alien Savvy is live

cover2

And it’s a book! ALIEN SAVVY, a Western SF Novella, is now available on Kindle, Smashwords, and Kobo with Nook, Google Books/Google Play, and CreateSpace forthcoming.

 

” When Hank Martin runs into a strange disk complete with little gray men while herding cattle in remote Ogden County, Oregon during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he has to wonder if he’s going crazy or if the Russians are invading. Together with his talented cowhorse, Missy, and the support of his wife and local ranchers, Hank is determined to get those cattle rounded up, no matter if aliens, Russians, or weird Air Force bureaucrats want to stop him. Will he get those cattle rounded up, or will he lose too many to fund his dreams of raising a line of competitive cowhorses?”

 

Direct links:

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q39I4LO

Smashwords: Alien Savvy: https://smashwords.com/books/view/495940

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/alien-savvy

Comments Off on Alien Savvy is live

Filed under writer promo stuff

A short story review here

So I got an interesting review on my Trust and Treachery story, “Live Free or Die.” The reviewer considered the story to stick too close to a couple of traditional tropes, but…she did comment that elements in the story reminded her of Ann Leckie’s writing in Ancillary Justice. Kind of a back-handed compliment…but you know what? I’ll take it, with a note to myself that yeah, I missed the theme I was really trying to hit with that story. Not bad, though. Any review where you even tangentally (no, I did NOT mean that as a pun ;->) earn a comparison to a Hugo winner is nice.

http://www.tangentonline.com/print–other-reviewsmenu-263/anthologies-reviewsmenu-107/2520-trust-and-treachery-tales-of-power-and-intrigue-ed-by-day-al-mohamed-a-meriah-crawford

Comments Off on A short story review here

Filed under writer squeeee!

A productive day in writer life

So today was a trip to Clatskanie to help friend clear out his spring household water system (best done in the driest portion of the year, before the fall rains start). While DH and Friend tackled the spring, I opted out of the outdoor work. Didn’t want to dance with the potential for bees/wasps/hornets/other things that sting and I had writing and editing work to do. Besides, bushwhacking uphill through recently (as in four years past) logged brushland isn’t in my skill set. Former Logger Boyz waving chain saws are better suited for that game.

While the Boyz waved chain saws and other adventures (including relocating salamanders and patching the cistern) I stayed back and cooked dinner for starving Elder Boyz. A cruise through Safeway yielded a decent package of pork stew chunks from the rotten meat section (pull date NOW), frozen veggies, Ragu sauce, potatoes and tiny sweet peppers for snacks. After whipping up an impromptu stew to simmer in the oven, I finished off the first pass through a fun MS for edits, then jotted down notes for Netwalk’s Children. Hugely productive progress on that work today…to be continued tomorrow.

Additionally, I did a little hauling/stacking of firewood (the goal of tomorrow’s Clatskanie trip), nibbled on blackberries and raspberries, slipped out to the barn to observe the adult barn owl roosting in the rafters, and got some cool pix of a Pileated Woodpecker. Plus wrote.

Dang, I could definitely live like this.

So hey. Editor available. Reasonable rates. Want to figure out complex plot twists? Let’s chat.

Writer grrrl needs to support her chosen lifestyle without resorting to substitute teaching.

(And hey. I’m drooling at the possibility of sharing the Seeking Shelter cover. OMG, the last time I saw a cover this nice and right on was for Alma Alexander’s River anthology. It’s just that cool. Sweet!)

Comments Off on A productive day in writer life

Filed under writer life

New story live..JC the Ski Bum

Issue Two of Fantasy Scroll Magazine is out, and with it….one of my stories!

http://fantasyscrollmag.com/article/jc-the-ski-bum-joyce-reynolds-ward/

Enjoy. I had fun writing it, and it’s based on a throwaway line that happened during one of the epic Welches Ski Nights from a few years back. 😉

Comments Off on New story live..JC the Ski Bum

Filed under writer promo stuff

Announcements of a writerly sort…..

So things have not exactly been idle in Casa Reynolds-Ward of late….

First of all, I have a short story coming out in Trust and Treachery, due out in April from Dark Quest Books.

Secondly, I just signed the contract for “J.C. the Ski Bum,” to be coming out in Fantasy Scroll Magazine soon.

Thirdly, Winter Shadows should be going live by tomorrow on Amazon, Kobo, Nook, and Google Play.

And other stuff is in the works….

Comments Off on Announcements of a writerly sort…..

Filed under writer promo stuff

Announcements, writer squee!

Various announcements here.

First of all, no Netwalk: Foundations this month, primarily due to website hijinks. Hijinks are now enroute to being remedied and we’ll have the last piece of the Daughters cycle for the first September posting, followed by some truly awesome vignettes. A peek into Sarah’s relationship with Francis Stewart just before the Gizmo discovery, and what Nik and Angela’s private life can really look like (Security in love, right?).

Second, Netwalk: Expanded Edition will be released either late this week or early next week.

And third–drum roll here, though most folks on Facebook have already read this….

I am now under contract to eTreasures Publishing for two completed works; my fantasy novel Pledges of Honor and my science fiction novella Seeking Shelter at the End of the World. Squee! They’ll first come out in ebook but if there are enough sales, there will be hard copies. I’m actually quite excited about this. Pledges is set in a world I’ve been developing for thirty years, and it has empathic horses that are grouchy, temperamental, green-broke and ripping stalls apart, heroic, protective, and so on. Let’s just say that if you get a mental image of buffalo dung from Mira, you’ve just been seriously dissed by a certain gray daranval mare.

Seeking Shelter first came into being in the early 90s, about the same time that I was working on early Netwalk ideas. The McGuffin in this story is the presence of genetically modified environmental modelers, known as Canaries, in a world where toxic clouds descend unpredictably and habitable space is getting short. I’ve not done a lot of development in this world, just one short story, until a few years ago when I wrote a novella, “Pink Cats Dancing at the End of the World,”  for some contest or another (for Samhain?) and it didn’t make the cut. The “Canaries” short story, meanwhile, had managed to win an Honorable Mention in Writers of the Future so I knew the concept had potential. I played with the story, revising and resending it. The novella I tucked aside, planning to send it to the right market when I had time to research novella markets. I sent “Pink Cats”  to a private editor this spring thinking I might self-publish the story. I’d retitled it “You Don’t Get Perfect at the End of the World” because the “Pink Cats” aspect wasn’t working.

Instead, I met the acquisitions editor for eTreasures at EPICon and ended up with her expressing interest in the story (I was at EPIC because the River anthology was up for an EPIC Award and I went with the editor).  She bought it, along with Pledges. But because Perfect was a little shorter than she wanted to publish, she asked if I had something to go with it.

I did–the “Canaries” story, which is set just before Perfect.

And so, we now have Seeking Shelter.

I am very happy about this.

But I also have more words to write, plus a horse post.

Comments Off on Announcements, writer squee!

Filed under writer promo stuff

Tap-tap, tap-tap. Anyone there?

Well, yeah, the WordPress site had problems. Long story short, for various reasons including cost, I’ve switched hosts and we’ll see how this does for crossposting to DW and LJ. I still had LiveJournal access and put up a few posts there, but it wasn’t what really worked well. I’m debating about posting the last “Daughters” story this month or waiting until next month and calling August a draw. But that will give me some breathing space on Netwalk: Foundations stories because I’ve just about got enough ahead to last for the rest of the year.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on writing-wise, but I can’t talk much about it yet–some of this is contractual, other parts are in very early development stages. If I can pull this all together, then let’s just say that Good Stuff Is Happening. And…cover squee!

netwalk-ee-cover   Yes, Netwalk: The Expanded Edition will be going live soon!

Besides an updated Netwalk (to include the Gizmo additions), I’ve reprinted two previously published Netwalk Sequence short stories (“The Ties That Bind” from Random Realities and “Cold Dish” from M-BRANE SF 9as well as added two more short vignettes tied into the first two chapters of Netwalk in this expanded edition. As I’ve said before, this is the only time I plan to do this significant a rewrite and reissue of something already published, and the main reason I’m doing it is to insert some major series material that I developed in the second book.

Netwalk Expanded will also be available in trade paperback through Createspace. It was only available in ebook format before. I do plan to have all of the main Netwalk Sequence novels available in both ebook and trade paper from now on, but any novellas or short stories will be in ebook format only, though I will probably do some collections later on.

One project I can talk about is that I do plan to print a collected edition of some Netwalk: Foundations pieces in ebook format this fall. I plan to issue a collected version of The Daughters Cycle and a serialized Foundations piece, Problems at the Andrews Ranch for late fall Christmas sale.

Meanwhile, in other areas, I’ve finished my summer classes and am now getting ready for the school year.

Mocha is doing well, though we discovered a training hole that I’ll be writing about later (going downhill with a rider). The problem-solving around that is interesting. I’ve finally found the right stuff to treat her hooves with, and she’s showing much improvement. We’re gearing up for a show in late September, if everyone stays healthy and sound….

On that front, I bashed my foot pretty badly last week on a bedpost. It was a L-brace that I whacked between my fourth toe and my big toe. The picture is on Facebook, I won’t subject folks to it but suffice to say the colors were interesting. I don’t think it’s broken but now that the swelling’s gone down, there’s definitely been a significant strain to my tendons and ligaments. I’ve whipped out the Vetwrap (I wish, it’s actually the boring taupe human version. I’m planning a tack store visit for something cheaper and more colorful tomorrow) to bind it for support. Otherwise the tendons/ligaments ache worse. With school starting up next week, I’ve got to be able to walk soundly so I don’t bung up my hips. Again.

Growing old ain’t for sissies, but it sure beats the alternative. 😉

We’re at the stage of summer now where evening cooldowns are more likely. Cricket summer. My favorite part of the season.

Anyway, onward to working on stuff. Let’s see how this baby posts.

Comments Off on Tap-tap, tap-tap. Anyone there?

Filed under Uncategorized, writer life