The Galaxy’s Cube out in Abyss and Apex!

Well, this is certainly overdue. But no matter: my short story “The Galaxy’s Cube” went live at Abyss & Apex for their 58th issue, Q2 2016. It takes place on a Thailand-inspired colony world – there’s a strong biopunk favour, lavish descriptions of haunting cities, dormant AIs, relationships and the sense of wonder and sorrow. It’s also a bit of a love letter to the choatic, beautiful sprawling mess that is Bangkok, Thailand and the wonderful people who reside there. I’ve lived in the place and visited it more than a dozen times and I’ve never had a bad experience.

I wrote this story back in late 2014 or so. It gave me hell at the time of writing, I had no idea where I was going with it, what I’d do, how it would turn out, etc. But I pressed on, finished it, and sold it to Abyss & Apex very quickly. A&A have published work by Aliette de Bodard, Marie Brennan, Rae Carson, J. N.K. Jemisin, Will McIntosh C. J. Cherryh, Paul Di Filippo, Jay Lake, Tim Pratt, and others, so it’s an honour to appear in their pages. So far it’s gotten pretty good reviews, including one in SF Revu where they called it a “fantastic, heartfelt story.”

It’s not perfect of course, considering I wrote it a year and a half ago, but I think it’s one of my better stories, and I feel it’s one of those stories that I “leveled up” with. Considering that they only publish 20 or so stories a year, and frequently get Honourable Mentions in the Year’s Best, I’m pretty happy to be in their pages. Many thanks to my editors Wendy and Tonya who pushed for it to be the leading story of the issue.

So yes. Sit back and go to a future Thai colony and do let me know what you think of the story. You can find it online for free here.

May 9, 2016 0

Words and words and words, starting a new project

For those of you who’ve been following my tweets recently, I’m neck deep in a new project. Not a new short story, a new novel. I finished my YA epic Slavic fantasy about a month back. I took a short break before thinking about what I was going to do next. I didn’t want to jump into edits straight away – me and my YA fantasy didn’t have a very good relationship in the last third of the book. We needed, need, time away from each other. In a couple of months I’ll come back and start hacking away at it with an axe.

But until then I needed something else. I’ve had this idea boiling in the basement of my skull for quite some time, but didn’t have the backstory to support it. I took a few days to flesh it out, do some outlining, then threw myself into writing. No side projects, no short stories, no editing. Nothing. Just words words words.

I stated that book two and a half weeks ago, about 18 days. Right now it’s sitting at 19,000 words. That’s my part time job at the moment. Butt in chair, pouring my mind on the keyboard and screen. No inspiration quotes, no #amwriting hashtags on twitter, no in-the-zone yoga mind experiments.

Just black words on white paper.

My minimum target is 1,000 words per day, not including plot outlining, world-building, and running off to jot down some cool idea. And so far I’m not doing too badly. I know where my characters are going, where they’ve come from, and (most) of the world around them. I can’t say much about the project, but it’s a space opera crossed with a murder mystery. It’s not YA either, my first adult book since my first rubbish attempt at writing a SF/F when I was in highschool.

I’m not thinking about how to sell it, how to pitch it, if the current market is good for it, nothing. I’m just having fun and getting that work down. It’s hard sometimes, and I hate every sodding word on the sodding page, but I’m doing it. It’s going to be one ugly half-breed when it’s done (coming from a half-breed), but it’ll be done.

One of the worst things I ever did was let my YA fantasy sit and rot for whole months at a time over a stretch of one year and three months while I was finishing university. It grew old and stale, and even now it’s in desperate need of a scrub up and tweaking. So I’m not making that mistake here. I’m living and breathing this world and this world alone, and it’s pouring out of me fast.

By this time next week I hope to be at 26,000 words, perhaps a little more. By the time this is over my fingers are going to be worn down to the bone and my brain having gone through a deep fat fryer, but no one said this job was meant to be easy.

‘Until then….

April 23, 2016 1

Interview over at SF Signal

It’s been a busy week, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve reached 9.6k for my new space opera novel. That’s roughly 1k a day, and will be more if I manage to reach 11k by the end of today. But I want to take the time today to really cement the fundamentals of the world in my head and have that high-concept, ultra-epic coolness that helps the universe stand out from the rest. I’ve literally got a note stapled above my screen that reads “up the weird, add the cool, mix it up”. And that I will do!

But in the meantime I also managed I do an interview over at SF Signal, talking about me, my writing process, my job as an editor, how I managed to get onboard as an editor for a Hugo-winning podcast at the age of 19, etc. If you ever had a burning sensation to know what it was like working with William Gibson, Christopher Priest, Robin Hobb, and George R. R. Martin while Season 5 of Game of Thrones was airing, you can settle that satisfaction right now! It was almost surreal, typing that all up and realising just what we managed to achieve.

Anyway, the interview is here if you want to check it out. Enjoy!

April 15, 2016 0

Daega’s Test in POLISH

I just got the email, it seems that my translation of “Daega’s Test” (which originally appeared here in Nature early last year) is up! With my recent Arabic translation, each of my Nature stories have had translations into languages that I have a background in!

I’ll ask my dad later on, but from my limited Polish so far the translation is very naunced. For example, the original story says “ngaw” as a fruit, but they’ve put rambutan, which is another name for it. They’ve also added “tuk-tuk” instead of auto rickshaw, which is actually what the cars are called in Malaysia, Thailand, etc. Whoever did it really knew their stuff.

There’s also a guy in the comments remarking (I think?) that this story would fit in a long time after the events of Blade Runner, and that it’s familiar, but also “fresh”.

So this makes me very very happy indeed. You can find the story here – if you can read it, that is!.

April 12, 2016 0

My fiction…in Arabic?

Yes, the inevitable has happened. One of my short stories is now available in Arabic.

I just found this out last night when trawling through some data. It seems my story “System Reboot” first published in English in Nature has been published in the Middle-Eastern edition of Nature and given a translation into Arabic.

Which is pretty cool. That’s one more box I can tick on my achievement list I suppose.

Of course despite actually being an Arab I can’t actually read a single word, or speak it for that matter. So I’m going to live with bringing shame to my ancestors and be content that some oil sheik with a taste for science fiction is reading my work right now. Seems fine to be.

Oh, you can find the story here. Good luck reading it.

March 13, 2016 1

30 Days Around Europe (and Asia!)

I’ve been home for about three weeks now. I have not posted this yet partially because I’m lazy and partially because I’ve been super super busy. But it’s time to post and I shall.

So me and my dad basically shuttled around Europe for an entire month, also stopping in Dubai and Malaysia for a few days. Our trip went like this:

Germany > Czech Republic > Poland > Austria > Italy > United Kingdom > Dubai > Singapore > Malaysia > Australia.

There was a bit of going back and forth while we were in Europe, since all the countries are so close. It says something when you can drive to Italy for pizza and cruise over to Germany for a dive in the swimming pool/spas. I really do miss it – it was winter when we went and anyone who knows me well knows how much I despise the heat. Give me blizzards, snowstorms and the biting wind anyday. No rush, no work, no deadlines. Now that I’m back here I’m getting right into the thick of all those things. Adulting sucks.

Anywho, here are the best photos from the trip.

Innsbruck, Austria.

Brenner, Italy:

Prague, Czech Republic:

Wroclaw and Krakov, Poland.

ddd

And yes, I did need to put that beer there.

While I was in the UK I also visited the offices of Nature, who has published two of my short stories. It was great and I felt like a Real Writer Now™. Here are the pictures, amoung others.

And then there’s Malaysia:

And of course, the best to last…

March 11, 2016 1

Bruce Sterling and Christopher Priest on StarShipSofa!

So it’s been a busy two weeks on StarShipSofa. Last week we played a story by one of the godfathers of cyberpunk, Bruce Sterling. He’s known in and outside of the genre slash sci-fi circles, and it was an absolute pleasure to have him.

Narrating his story is film actor Paul Cram. Paul mostly does indie films, but he’s had speaking roles with actors such as Cilian Murphy (The Dark Knight, 28 Days Later) Woody Harrelson (True Detective) Judy Greer (Jurassic Park) and others. We’re VERY proud to have him join StarShipSofa and narrate this story. Make sure you check out his IMDB profile here. And make sure you look out for some of his films, too.

You can find Bruce Sterling’s episode here.

And we’ve also had the mighty privilege of playing a story by Christopher Priest. He wasn’t that popular in the US. At least not until one of his novels was turned into a the film The Prestige by director Christopher Nolan of The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar variety. You’ve almost certainly seen it:

David Bowie acted in this film as well, so we’re very proud to be associated with the project. Priest himself is a masterclass, as the story demonstrates. His best work is The Inverted World, which you have to read. I won’t say much more than that.

I’ve been very proud to have worked on these two episodes and the fine gentlemen who exhibit actual skill in narrating, acting and writing. Make sure to grab the Christopher Priest episode here if you can.

…and that’s all for now.

March 10, 2016 0

Forging ahead and looking back: it’s important

With one’s writing career – and artistic careers in general, I think, there’s a tendency to think about what we haven’t yet accomplished, as opposed to what we have accomplished. Film directors, musicians, script writers and video game designs are all privy to this pothole, but in my case writers especially.

You don’t look back on your sales and your publications that you’ve already earned, you dwell on how much you want to release this story, or finish that next project that just isn’t working out, or sell a proposal that no one’s buying. It happens to all of us. Just recently, David Fincher had Utopia cancelled at HBO. A Oscar-winning director who’s bought us Se7en, Fight Club, Gone Girl, The Social Network, and others, but now he’s had years of work flushed down the toilet. Ouch.

I’m not on Mr. Flincher’s playing field (in case you all weren’t aware of that already), but the same rules apply to everyone. We tend not to focus on what we have already accomplished.

As some of you good good people may know, I’m out o’ town for a holiday. Right of this moment I’m in a little Polish town somewhere outside of Wroclaw. Ensue many Anglos with tongues in knots after attempting to pronounce that correctly. I was here exactly two years ago. I was writing writing away, sending out over a dozen stories to all manner of venues, hoping to land a sale in some department. I was banging my head against the wall because no one was buying a damn word I wrote. Not a single one. Nada.

Sentences like will I ever sell anything and is my career over before it starts kept tumbling through my head. But sitting in this tiny room I kept conjuring up monsters and fantasy landscapes and rain-drenched cities. I kept plugging away without knowing if I’d ever make a sale.

Two years later and here I am. I’ve sold so many stories and articles I’ve lost count (I think the count is close to fifty now). I’ve sold to Nature twice, Strange Horizons six times, and scooped up a Finalist position at Writers of the Future. I’ve had an essay published in one of Lightspeed’s Destroy anthologies. I’ve had the opportunity to produce audio fiction by George R. R. Martin, William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson and Robin Hobb for a Hugo-winning podcast that I co-edit. And right now I’m working on a story for my first every fiction solicitation to an anthology that pays pro-rates.

I’ve done all that in two years at the starting age of 18.

It’s not meant as a boast (well, perhaps a little), but it’s more of a look at how much can be done in less than two years of writing.

And yet.

And yet…

I ask myself why I haven’t placed in Writers of the Future. Why I don’t have a pro sale that isn’t flash. Why I haven’t sold to F&SF, Asimovs or Analog yet. Why I don’t have an anthology sale. Why I haven’t appeared in the Best of Years. Why I don’t have an agent. Why I don’t have a book deal. Why I don’t….

Stop.

It can cave your head in just about the whys and how comes that inevitably crop up. I know people who have sold to venues I can only dream about, but then reach for another magazine only to fail. I’m very, very fortunate to be in the position where I am now. Pierce Brown wrote one novel a year for seven years before Red Rising sold. Brandon Sanderson wrote thirteen. I know someone who’s written fourteen novels and had none of them picked up. And I’m sure it’s taken others far longer with many more books.

I cannot even imagine what it would be like, collecting rejections for your tenth novel and wondering if you’d ever have a single word of your fiction published. I’m sitting here with multiple sales to Nature (published by Macmillan) and something inside me cracks whenever I see the latest book launches and wonder how long it’ll take before I get there myself. Thank you very much, brain.

So this is a message to anyone who’s struggling (including myself) that it’s healthy to look back from time to time and see how far you’ve come. Hell, most people don’t even finish a novel, let alone a story. Look at your virtual (or physical) shelf and see your accomplishments.

Two years ago in this very room I didn’t have a single one under my belt. And in two years time when I come to Europe again I want to look back on this blog post and realise how much I’ve achieved since. In the next two years I’m going to get that literary agent, that book deal, that Best of Years publication.

And the two years after that…who knows? Fincher directing a film adaptation of my novel would be nice (ain’t ever gonna happen, though).

Until then I’m going to keep forging ahead, but I’m also going to look back. If you’re struggling, maybe you should do the same. It’s a long long road and there ain’t many pit-stops along the way. Well done on getting this far.

But never stop walking.

January 31, 2016 3