Indie Weekend: Being Scared
If you met me on the street, you’d never know I walk around with this crazy, delicate balance of being scared and wary versus being excited and eager to see what’s around the next corner. We like to talk about being brave and fearless and embracing the authentic, but I live in a culture that […]
Indie Weekend: Uncharted Territory
The Star Empire: Vacation Destinations
One of the most enjoyable things I get to do when writing sci-fi and fantasy settings is to create the kind of spaces I’d love to visit. Even the places with, ahem, challenging environments, are still fascinating to me if only to understand how they got there. Varuna is not one of those “challenging” environments, however. […]
Indie Weekend: 2018 Recap
A Year of Sneaky Progress 2018 was a year of doing brave things, but sneaky. Like a ninja. At the beginning of the year, I challenged myself to be brave and confront the deep-seated fears I have been carrying around. So I published 3 books in 3 different series and one omnibus while I wasn’t […]
Strange Magics: Tithed Excerpt
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.19.2″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.19.2″][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”3.19.2″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.19.2″] “Presentation” If I go any further down, I’m going to be going uphill on the other side of the world. Niamne’s legs ached from the downhill trek. Her fingers were sore from grabbing onto the cart through rough patches, uneven bumps, and one sharp dip that […]
Original Poetry: Christmas Eve on Friendship Station
Christmas Eve on Friendship Station An original send-up by Athena Grayson (with apologies to Clement C. Moore, Coca-Cola, and astrophysics) ‘Twas the night before Christmas, all through the space station Not a creature was resting, or taking vacation. The techs shifted cargo from shuttle to ship While inspectors checked mass outside gravity’s grip. The launch […]
Strange Magics: High Fantasy with a Gothic Twist
One of the most beloved elements of high fantasy is the feeling that you are in another world. Without the history or the limitations of our own world, the rules can (in theory) be anything you want them to be. Yet there’s a tendency to stick with a “medieval Europe” analogue that’s hard for a […]
Indie Weekend: NaNoWriMo
[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.17.4″] Ahh, November. When the autumn sets in for real (or the spring, if you’re in the southern hemisphere) and the weather’s firmly set on the next brutal season and the last vestiges of the previous one are fading. And writers everywhere hunker down in front of their keyboards and “go dark” […]
Introducing Strange Magics
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.17.2″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.17.2″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.17.2″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.17.2″]No one likes an ivory tower quite like a mage likes an ivory tower and no matter the school of magic, the world’s practitioners tend to keep apart. So much so that even though the farmfolk who follow the Corn goddess and the priest-caste who serve Lady […]
The Star Empire: Jumpgate Travel
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.15″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.15″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.15″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.15″] Jumpgates are a necessity for interplanetary travel in the worlds of the Jewel, but travelers must use them according to rules both man-made and established by the nature of the Jump system itself. Unscheduled jumps are fraught with peril and only fools make them in the most […]