All we are are links in the wind [links]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

LinksHappy Friday, folks. Hope those of you in the U.S. had a great Labor day weekend. I didn’t end up doing a whole lot, but managed to get in one more BBQ night, and saw a couple of movies. The Apparition was ‘meh,’ through and through, but The Possession was a pretty solid and gripping possession/exorcism chiller–not really groundbreaking in terms of plot, but well executed.

As far as writing goes, it’s been a bit slow. Well, not really, but instead of foraging ahead to new and exciting word counts, I’ve been revisiting past chapters of my Untitled Mad Science Novel and doing some large-scale revision, to bring events and characters and backstories in line with fixes I’ve come up with for things that weren’t working. Next week I should get to chug on along with new verbiage.

In the meantime, here are some random interesting links and things. (I’ve also got some Fading Light-specific stuff, but I’ll save that for a separate post.)

Here’s an article on some of the new ethical and political issues that are arising and will be arising from coming biotech advances. Biopolitics cuts across current ideological classifications, it turns out, and makes for some strange bedfellows. Interesting to me both on the face of it, and as a source for story ideas.

So, now people are making their own satellites to put into orbit. DIY science rocks.

IO9 reveals all you wanted to know about dinosaur cosplay in the 1930s. Because that was a thing then. Yes.

Driverless cars will be legal in California in a few years. The future, we are in you.

DMCA: An Author’s Best Friend. This links to a guide for writers on how to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get bogus copies of books on pirate sites taken down.

Here’s a car that runs on compressed air. Not really the speed and range I’d need, but cool nonetheless.

Science has determined that gibbons on helium sing like opera stars. I can only imagine what that grant proposal must have read like.

Great SF authors share their biggest writing setbacks – and how they triumphed. This should be of interest to any writer, not just SF writers.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: 3poD/Bigstock.com.

Fading Light Release Day! [fading light]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Fading LightThe day, she has arrived! Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous, edited by Tim Marquitz, published by Angelic Knight Press, and including my short story “Goldilocks Zone”, is now out and about for your reading pleasure!

Fading Light, for those just tuning in, is an anthology of thirty tales of monsters making their moves on the world of the living. The writing prompt was this:

“The light has failed: the era of man is at its end.

“Born of darkness, the creatures of myth, legend, and nightmare have long called the shadows home. Now, with the cruel touch of the sun fading into memory, they’ve returned to claim their rightful place amidst humanity: as its masters.”

From that came an impressive set of stories, diverse in style, tone, genre, and monstrous vision. I read the early review copy a few months ago, and was thrilled to be included with such talented writers and strong tales. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy them as well.

Fading Light is available today in print and for the Kindle from Amazon, and in a variety of e-book formats (.mobi, .pdf, .epub, etc.) from Smashwords. And don’t forget the 99-cent e-book only companion volume, collecting five more monstrous tales (again, from Amazon and Smashwords).

FL already has a couple of good reviews, right here and here.

While I’m here, let me just also throw in some links to additional FL publicity that’s come out in the past week:

The fourth multi-author interview was on the Fantasy Book Critic site: part one and part two.

Contributor Peter Welmerink wrote a guest blog for Fantasy Book Review on writing longform fiction vs. writing short stories.

Contributor Adam Millard wrote a guest blog for This Is Horror on reasons for reading at least one H.P. Lovecraft story.

Contributor Edward M. Erdelac wrote a guest blog for Fantasy Book Review hailing H.P. Lovecraft’s recently passed birthday.

Aaaand… that’s it for now, I think. Hope you enjoy reading the stories in Fading Light as much as the lot of us did writing them!

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Cover of Fading Light by Jessy Lucero.

Short Reviews: August 2012 [reviews]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Short ReviewsThe Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines

What happens after the ‘happily ever after’? In the case of the Princess Danielle (aka Cinderella), it involves learning to live with getting what she thought she wanted… and rescuing her prince when he ends up being the one in jeopardy. Hines’ take on the fairy tale worlds of Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty mixes the darker nuances of the early versions of the tales with humor–not the ‘wokka wokka’ kind, but the more trenchant and wise kind that relies on fully-realized and nuanced characters and their observations and decisions. I enjoyed this first book in the ‘Princess Series,’ and look forward to the next.

Afterlife by Naomi Clark

Yasmin Stoker, a ghost tour guide who also happens to be a 600-year old wraith who feeds on the souls of revenants, sees a man get pulled into the netherworld by a ghost. Soon, she’s both investigating the incident and trying to deflect someone else in their investigation, while the complications pile up. Afterlife serves up a potent urban fantasy story that weaves plots and subplots without ever getting tangled up. P.I. Ethan Banning, a secondary character in this one, steals just about every scene he’s in. Shoregrave, the fictional setting of the novel, had a subtly dangerous feel that crept in and lingered.

Four in the Morning by Malon Edwards, Edward M. Erdelac, Lincoln Crisler, and Tim Marquitz

Four in the Morning is an unusual anthology, in that instead of collecting a lot of short stories, it is made up of four novellas, loosely based on different stages of life (youth, early adulthood, middle age, and old age). The genres and styles of these dark tales vary as well, from steampunk (“Half Dark” by Malon Edwards) to urban fantasy (“Gully Gods” by Edward M. Erdelac) to science fiction (“Queen” by Lincoln Crisler) to horror (“Cenotaph” by Tim Marquitz). I enjoyed all four offerings, though it took me a bit to warm up to “Gully Gods”. Malon Edwards’ “Half Dark” was my favorite of the quartet, though, by turns dark, strange, charming, and memorable–qualities I only sometimes find in steampunk stories.

The Noctuary by Greg Chapman

In The Noctuary, a dark fiction writer is given a tempting offer–the ability to make his words become reality, if he becomes a scribe for underworld creatures known as the Dark Muses. He can write things out of existence, and rewrite the tragic elements of his past… but at a price. This novella is the kind of horror that appeals to me most–the slippery, chaotic kind where the fear comes from seeing how thin and easily torn reality could be, and being forced to face what is left–if anything–when all that defines us to ourselves is stripped away. Which isn’t to say it’s not gruesome and bloody–it certainly is. It’s also a lot more than that, and worth a look for supernatural horror fans.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: silver-john/Bigstock.com.

Fading Light Publicity Roundup and Giveaway [fading light]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Fading LightJust getting caught up on all the advance publicity things for Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous that appeared while I was on vacation…

Fading Light Multi-Author Interview #1, part 3 on Lincoln Crisler’s blog.

Fading Light Multi-Author Interview #2, part 1 on The Nocturnal Library’s blog.

Fading Light Multi-Author Interview #2, part 2 on The Nocturnal Library’s blog.

Fading Light Multi-Author Interview #3 on Bastard Books’ blog. Get there before midnight (EDT) Sunday 8/26/2012 to enter a raffle giing away five e-book copies of Fading Light!

Interview with Editor Tim Marquitz on Fantasy Book Review’s blog.

Fading Light‘s page on Facebook, which you should like before the monsters get you.

Tom Olbert: Contemporary Horror and the Anthology — guest post by contributor Tom Olbert on Fantastic Book Review’s site.

Teasers and short excerpts for the Fading Light short story “Final Rights” by Peter Welmerink are on his blog here, here, and here.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Fading Light cover art: Jessy Lucero.

Not so much a plan as a sort of lining up of things [personal | writing]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

PersonalI’ve been on vacation this past week, and in fact still am. Last week involved a trip up to Torch Lake, Michigan, and my aunt and uncle’s place there. Had a great time, managed to get by with no great sunburn (unlike other years). Visited some wineries up in Leelenau County there and picked up a few bottles.

Yesterday was my birthday. The original plan was for Kristyn and I to go to Cedar Point for the day, but rainy weather reports made us postpone that (to tomorrow, in fact). So we largely spent the day amusing ourselves with mini-golf, go-karting, arcade games, pancake-house-visiting, and wine-imbibing. Not all at the same time, mind.

So, that’s been my week. Unfortunately, not a lot of it has involved writing, though I have spent a good deal of time thinking through what I’ll be working on in the coming weeks and months. I’m hesitant to call it a plan, as that involves a rather optimistic idea that no fresh shiny ideas will barge to the head of the queue and take over my fingers. Since that’s pretty much been the story of my writing so far this year, I’ve got to be realistic.

WritingBut. I think I’ve more-or-less worked out how things are going to go through the rest of the year. Starting with my Untitled Mad Science Novel. Untitled mainly because all the ideas I come up with for the title turn out, upon a quick Google search, to already have been used. Fortunately, that’s about the only thing that’s stopped at the moment, as the writing itself for it is going very well, with about 13k (of a projected 80-90k) words first-drafted. The genre, broadly, is Humorous Weird Dark Science Fantasy with a side of WTF. My goal is to finish the first quarter of the first draft by mid-September, then move on to…

The rewriting of The Morpheist. I have a very rough draft of this 29k biopunk novella, which needs to have multiple things fixed, some detail added to the description of people and places, and some adjustment to make it look like the things I came up with for my main characters during writing were intended all along. You know how it is. My goal here is to get this to a point where it’s coherent, polished, and maybe ready for a few beta readers to tear into it. Then I’ll return to UMSN and tackle the second quarter of the first draft, which should take me to the end of the year.

At the same time all this is going on, I’ve had a notion to dig deep into my past and revisit my old Nihil Nations stories, starting with Electricity in the Rain. It was my first publication, serialized in the pages of Mythic Heroes (the first four parts, anyway–the fifth never saw publication as the magazine died out from under it). It’s a dark science fiction take on the emergence of people with super abilities, and how the world reacts (closer in spirit to The 4400 than Heroes, though it predates them both by a long shot). With some heavy rewriting (my style at that time was still (cough) evolving) and new material, it could make novella size. If I decide to go ahead with this, it’ll likely be at the same time as the other two projects above.

Sometime in there as well, I hope to bash out a short story or two. Maybe some short-short flash fiction; it’s been quite a while since I attempted any, and that may be the only way anything gets done with everything else I’m trying to work on. Quite possibly something with bugs in it. I’m thinking bugs.

How’s by you?

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. First photo: Elena Ray/Bigstock.com. Second photo: Andres/Bigstock.com.

Fading Light Multi-Author Interview The First (pts. 1 & 2) [fading light]

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

Fading LightThe first of the multi-author interviews regarding the anthology Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous is out on author Lincoln Crisler’s blog. He saw it, reared back, and karate-chopped it into three parts, the first two of which are here and here. I’m not in these installments, but a number of my fellow FL contributors are–including William Meikle, Jake Elliot, Ed Erdelac, Nick Cato, Dorian Dawes, Gene O’Neill, Tom Olbert, Carl Barker, Tim Baker, TSP Sweeney, Adam Millard, Ryan Lawler, CM Saunders, and Gef Fox. Get some insight into Fading Light and the monstrous minds behind it!

I was going to ramble on after this (in another blog post) about things I’m currently writing, rewriting, considering, and so on, but as I was tired and headachey last night (when I would have wrote it), and I’m gonna be on the road much of today and gone ’til Tuesday, so… next time. Probably.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Fading Light cover art: Jessy Lucero.