ClubFloyd, Fireside Magazine, and a Kickstarter Update
There are few things that sap my motivation as much as having a cold, and my house got hit last week with a whopper. Threestripe and I are both on the mend, but it's been a quiet, sleepy time around the house as we've made our best efforts toward recovery. Thankfully, the Kickstarter was in its two-week quiet period after the funding was raised but during which any kinks got worked out. Luckily, we had very few kinks, and all should be progressing forward very soon. Shawn Merwin already has Into the Reach in his hands to edit, so I expect the momentum to start gaining on that project very soon.
In the meantime, I've been following a couple of other Kickstarters, including Fireside Magazine, which got funded and now has its submissions guidelines posted for flash fiction. I'm thinking of taking a look at my 3000 word short story draft of "Retirement" and seeing if I can cut it down. It needed work anyway, and maybe reducing its size would work out some of the problems that substrater Max Gladstone helped me identify when I first wrote it. (Speaking of Max, he has a guest post on Romance of the Three Kingdoms up over at A Dribble of Ink. Check it out!)
I've also begun work on my next Choice of Game, a Western currently titled Kidnapping at Willow Creek. As that's just starting, it's fun to see Choice of Kung Fu still getting some Internet love. Club Floyd, a group that plays interactive fiction together, played through Choice of Kung Fu awhile ago, and the full link to their experience of the game is available up at All Things JACQ. If you haven't played it, this is full of spoilers -- it takes you through all of Club Floyd's decisions on how to play the game through. There are multiple endings, of course, and multiple ways to get there, so if you're interested in seeing how other people played it, this might be a fun read. (Their commentary was certainly fun for me to see!)
In addition to writing, I'm reading longlist books for the Mythopoeic Society Fantasy Awards, review books for PW and Kirkus, and I'm one of the readers for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards this year. It's the first time I'm reading for ABNA in the romance category -- I've done the YA section before -- and I'm having a great time. The two titles I've read so far were really enjoyable, and I have high hopes for at least one of those titles to make it into the final rounds. It'd be nice if the rest of my titles were as fun as the first two!
Since I can't talk about most the books I'm reading -- what are you reading now, and what would you recommend to other readers?
In the meantime, I've been following a couple of other Kickstarters, including Fireside Magazine, which got funded and now has its submissions guidelines posted for flash fiction. I'm thinking of taking a look at my 3000 word short story draft of "Retirement" and seeing if I can cut it down. It needed work anyway, and maybe reducing its size would work out some of the problems that substrater Max Gladstone helped me identify when I first wrote it. (Speaking of Max, he has a guest post on Romance of the Three Kingdoms up over at A Dribble of Ink. Check it out!)
I've also begun work on my next Choice of Game, a Western currently titled Kidnapping at Willow Creek. As that's just starting, it's fun to see Choice of Kung Fu still getting some Internet love. Club Floyd, a group that plays interactive fiction together, played through Choice of Kung Fu awhile ago, and the full link to their experience of the game is available up at All Things JACQ. If you haven't played it, this is full of spoilers -- it takes you through all of Club Floyd's decisions on how to play the game through. There are multiple endings, of course, and multiple ways to get there, so if you're interested in seeing how other people played it, this might be a fun read. (Their commentary was certainly fun for me to see!)
In addition to writing, I'm reading longlist books for the Mythopoeic Society Fantasy Awards, review books for PW and Kirkus, and I'm one of the readers for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards this year. It's the first time I'm reading for ABNA in the romance category -- I've done the YA section before -- and I'm having a great time. The two titles I've read so far were really enjoyable, and I have high hopes for at least one of those titles to make it into the final rounds. It'd be nice if the rest of my titles were as fun as the first two!
Since I can't talk about most the books I'm reading -- what are you reading now, and what would you recommend to other readers?