Tag: publication credits

2019-09-26 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the September 26th edition of my author newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here.

So for this newsletter’s author’s note, I thought I’d do a roundup of all the magazines that have published my short stories in the last six months. There’s a surprisingly large number of them. They’re all great publications, so if any of them look interesting, feel free to give them your support and pick up a copy or two.

(As a side note, I’ve found that some email clients break my hyperlinks if I have too many of them in one email. I’m going to put the links in anyway, but if they’re broken for you, please let me know.)

First, my story “The Janus Anomaly” appeared in Kasma Magazine in May. It’s still up on the website, if you want to read it. They did a great illustration for it too!

The story is about a science officer on a scout ship that encounters an alien anomaly, and she can’t tell if she’s losing her mind or if she’s the only sane one while everyone else is crazy. Also, the story takes place in the same universe as the Gunslinger Trilogy.

Second, my story “The Gettysburg Paradox” appeared in the July issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly. The ebook copy of the magazine is available on most ebookstores, and you can find the link here.

The story is about a time traveling tourist at the Battle of Gettysburg who learns that almost all of the combatants are (not so secretly) time travelers themselves. In their efforts to reshape the world, they’ve all converged on this one turning point in history, making it the largest battle ever fought on American soil.

Third, my story “The Curse of the Lifewalker” appeared on The New Accelerator just last month. This is my third story that the good folks at TNA have picked up, and they publish new stories weekly with a very reasonable subscription model to their site.

The story takes place in Utah Valley a couple of hundred years after the apocalypse. Humanity has been afflicted with a blight that shortens all of our lifespans to 25 years, but the main character is one of the few people who is immune. But because of how things have changed in the intervening centuries, his immunity turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing, as he gradually becomes an outsider in his own community.

Fourth, my story “Lizzie-99XT” appeared in last month’s issue of Serial Magazine. The digital copy of the magazine is $2.99, and the print copy is $4.99. There are a bunch of other stories in this issue, and all of them are about life and death decisions.

Next month, I have a couple more stories coming out. “Starchild” will appear as a reprint in Bards and Sages Quarterly, and “The Infiltrator,” a never before published story, will appear in the anthology Not Far From Roswell. So be sure to keep an eye out for those!

Finally, here is the cover art for Edenfall. Check it out!

I’m very happy with how it turned out. The illustration is by Hideyoshi, aka Lorenz Ruwwe, who did the cover art for Genesis Earth. I still have to go through the edits, but that shouldn’t take longer than a week, and the ebook will be up for preorder shortly after. The release date will be in December.

“Lizzie-99XT” published in Serial Magazine!

It’s another week, and I have another short story out, this time in Serial Magazine! Here’s what the editor has to say about it:

We kick off ISSUE TWELVE with “Lizzie-99XT” by Joe Vasicek. This futuristic sci-fi tale follows a half-human, half-AI space pilot as she travels the galaxy to fight in an interplanetary war. She’s doing all she can to protect the lives down on Earth, but what type of life can this pilot truly have if most of it is spent lightyears away from those she loves?

“Lizzie-99XT” is a hard military SF piece about a starfighter pilot whose consciousness merges with the starfighter’s AI in order to fly it. She’s tasked with saving the world from a horde of alien invaders, but when battles are fought at near-light speeds, everything can change in an instant, and the home that she returns to may not be one that she recognizes.

Basically, it’s a cross between Neon Genesis Evangelion and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, except more uplifting. Probably. Also, it’s a short story, not a novel (or an anime series… yet). If that sounds intriguing, pick up a copy and read it today!

Buy Serial Magazine Issue 12

“The Open Source Time Machine” now available on The New Accelerator!

The good folks over at The New Accelerator have picked up another one of my stories! This time, it’s The Open Source Time Machine. If you’re already a subscriber, be sure to check it out, and if you’re not a subscriber, it looks like they put out a new weekly story for the very reasonable fee of £1 per month. If they’ll publish me twice, you know they can’t be that bad. Be sure to check it out!

Read “The Open Source Time Machine”
at The New Accelerator

Another publication in Leading Edge!

That’s right!  My poem “Zarmina,” dedicated to Gliese 581 g (the first exoplanet discovered in its sun’s habitable zone) is published on page 98 of issue 61 of Leading Edge!

Also included in this issue is an excellent essay by Brandon Sanderson, in which he introduces his second law of magic systems.  It’s an excellent essay, and has made me rethink how I do FTL systems, especially for the Gaia Nova universe.  I’ll have to do a post a little later on that.

Besides this landmark essay by Brandon Sanderson, this issue features stories by Dan Wells and Dave Farland, as well as an interview with Howard Tayler.  And as always, it includes a number of excellent stories and illustrations.  Check it out!

(Full disclosure, I volunteer as a slushpile reader and occasional copy editor for the magazine.  However, my work always goes through the submission process under a pen name, where only the head editor knows who I am until the decision on whether to acquire the story has been made.)

In other news, Genesis Earth is now up on Goodreads, so go check that out as well!  The nice thing about Goodreads is that you can give the book a # star rating without having to write out anything else.  If you’re so inclined, I would very much appreciate an honest review–but if you do give it a rating, please be honest.  Don’t worry; even if you give me less than five stars, I won’t hunt you down like this crazy author (hint: get some popcorn and read the comments).

So anyhow, that’s what’s been going on here.  Desert Stars is coming along slowly but surely, and I’m working on getting some cover art for Bringing Stella Home.  If you have any ideas or suggestions on the art, please let me know.  I’ll probably go through my back issues of Leading Edge to search out good sf artists.  For some reason, I’m having a hard time finding anything that clicks on deviantart.  My goal is to epublish that book by the end of July.

I’m published!

That’s right–my first published story just came out in issue 58 of The Leading Edge.  I am happy to say that after three years of formally pursuing my career as a writer, I am now a published author!

The story is titled Decision LZ1527, and it’s about a guy asking a girl out on a date–as told from the point of view of the little men inside his head piloting his body like a starship. I really like the tagline in the table of contents: “A man, a woman, and a whole crew of matchmakers.”

Full disclosure: I submitted this story after I joined the staff as a volunteer slushpile reader.  Most of the editors for this issue are pretty good friends of mine (including the Production Director, who’s one of my most trusted alpha readers).  I submitted it under a pseudonym, however, so most of the staff didn’t know it was mine until after they’d accepted it.

The Leading Edge is known for the excellent quality of its illustrations, and I’m happy to say that I lucked out with with the artist the editors picked for my story!  Josh McGill is a graphic designer and aspiring children’s book illustrator.  He’s done art for issues 53 and 55 of The Leading Edge. The picture on the right is the one he did for the front page of my story.  I must say, I’m impressed!

The Leading Edge is a semi-professional small press science fiction and fantasy magazine affiliated with BYU.  It’s been in publication since the early 80s, when Marion K. “Doc” Smith’s famous “class that wouldn’t die” got together and started it, along with Quark and LTUE.  If you would like to support the magazine (and read my story!) you can purchase a copy of issue 58 at the following link:

Issue 58: “Redemption Songs”

Lot’s of people dream about getting published, but it takes a lot of hard work and rejection to actually make it happen.  As writers, though, we tend to be harder on ourselves than we ought to be.  It took almost four years for Decision LZ1527 to find its way into print, but it did.  That’s enough to make the rest of the process worth it.

Let’s hope it’s the first of many!

Twenty percent, Writers of the Future, and the INTERN

I am now 20% finished with Ashes of the Starry Sea. Huzzah!  The story is definitely picking up steam.

In related news, my seven day totals has peaked higher than it’s been in the last two weeks, up above 17,500 words.  Inshallah, that number will rise to +24,000 befoore the end of the week.

In unrelated news, I’ve decided to recycle my 2009 Mayhew story for the Writers of the Future contest this quarter.  I’ve got until July 1st to get it out, but I have a plan, and I don’t think it will require too much extra work.  That was the thing holding me back (since, really, it’s not a story, it’s just a scene), but now I’ve got something that I think has a chance of working.

It’s funny how reading other people’s manuscripts motivates you to send your own stuff out.  I mean, reading the Leading Edge slushpile, I said to myself “you know, that story you wrote two years ago could probably get a pass.” Lo and behold!  With Writers of the Future, it’s definitely worth a shot.  Definitely.

Oh, and as I skimmed through Genesis Earth 2.0 today, the thought occured to me that I’ve written a kickass story here (pardon the language).  I mean, it’s far from perfect, and it’s not the best book ever written (not by a long shot), but it’s a lot more than a “stuff happens, the end” kind of story.  Maybe I’ll even see it in print someday.  And to think I almost trashed the project a year ago.

As something totally unrelated to personal news at all, check out this awesome new blog:

The straight dope on publishing from publishing’s most fearsome figure—THE INTERN.

Nice tagline!

As I read about the exploits of this publishing intern, I can’t help but think to myself, “hey, that could have been me.” Not quite sure how I feel about that, but I’m really glad to have all this time to write and work on my craft.  I definitely need it.