European Tour Continues for “The Schrödinger War”

Posted on March 16, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

My short story, “The Schrödinger War,” continues its European tour, this time making a stop at Catarsi.  The Catalan publication has accept and translated it for their spring 2014 issue, due out sometime around April.  As always, I’m excited whenever one of my stories gets accepted somewhere, and doubly so when it gets translated and published.

This is the second time “The Schrödinger War” been translated into a different language, and marks the fifth non-English language for my fiction.  Unfortunately, I still haven’t cracked one of the “major” European or Asian languages, so I still have something to keep working toward.

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2014 Nebula Nominees: Novel and Novella

Posted on March 12, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

Too long ago, I posted the Nebula Award nominees in the novelette and short story categories, and I promised to post the novel and novella nominees soon.  Hmm . . . .  This isn’t exactly soon, but here they are, as announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in February:

Best Novel:

“XXX” • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
“XXX” • Trial by Fire by Charles E. Gannon
“XXX” • Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
“XXX” • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)
“XXX” • Coming Home by Jack McDevitt
“XXX” • Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Best Novella:

“XXX” • “We Are All Completely Fine” by Daryl Gregory
“XXX” • “Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress
“XXX” • “The Regular” by Ken Liu
“XXX” • “The Mothers of Voorhisville,” Mary Rickert
“XXX” • “Calendrical Regression” by Lawrence Schoen
“XXX” • “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky

While I’m interested in longer works, I don’t read many novels these days because of other time commitments.  I’m also a woefully slow reader, so I’d never have time to read them all before the voting deadline (March 30).  Even so, I’d congratulate to all of the nominees and I hope to have more time in the future—when I retire?—to catch up on the wonderful books I’ve missed.

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A Little Bookkeeping

Posted on March 6, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

A quick post with some scheduling news.

My story “From the Darkness Beneath” will appear in the summer issue of Space and Time magazine (issue #124).  It’s been a long turn-around time (over 2 years) for this story, so I’m happy that it will finally see print.

A few months ago, I sold “Servant of the Sea” to Purple Sun Press for an unnamed fantasy anthology.  That anthology has a name now: Coven.  An unusual name, I think, because it conjures images of witches, but that’s not what the anthology is about.  Rather the publisher has said that “coven” has a broader meaning in that it’s a gathering, and the Coven anthology is a gathering of fantasy writers.  Okay, that’s cool.  Coven has been tentatively scheduled for August 2015.

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“The Negotiation” Heads to Poland

Posted on March 5, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

I got a pleasant surprise in my email yesterday from one of the editors at Szortal, a Polish science fiction site.  They liked my story “The Negotiation,” had translated it into Polish, and published it.  This is a first translation for “The Negotiation” (which originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction), and it’s the fifth non-English language for my work, which I find pretty amazing.

I haven’t been selling much in the way of new stuff, but my back catalogue is doing some heavy lifting for me during this slow period for new material.  English reprints are always nice, but there is something doubly satisfying about having a story translated into a different language — even if I don’t make anything financially off it, which is often the case with foreign translations.

So if you know Polish, head over and check it out.  If you do check it out, stop by here afterwards and let me know if the translator did a good job with it.

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“Portraits from the Shadow” Goes In the Trenches

Posted on March 3, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had made several sales during my December-January absence. I’ve already announced that “My Mask, Humanity” is getting more readers in The New Accelerator.  I’m now please to announce that my story war/ghost story “Portraits from the Shadow” will be reprinted in Verto Publishing’s In the Trenches, an anthology about the psychological effects of war.

“Portraits” originally appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show in 2013 and made Tangent’s Recommended Reading List, but unless you’re a subscriber to that publication, you’ve likely never read it.  Now you’ll get another chance, and I hope you’ll check out In the Trenches when it’s released later this year.

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Today Should be a National Holiday

Posted on March 2, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

As far as I’m concerned, today should be a national holiday because it’s Dr. Seuss’ birthday.  He was the first author I remember reading, the first writer whose name I actually knew, and first person whose books I would simply pull off the shelf because he wrote them.  All that before I was four years old, too, and four-year olds are a tough audience.

I’ve read just about every book Dr. Seuss has written, and I own most of them.  I still read The Lorax and How the Grinch Stole Christmas at least once a year.  I even have a book containing all of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s political cartoons from World War II that goes beyond fascinating (if you want to see a different side of Dr. Seuss, check out Dr. Seuss Goes to War).

Dr. Seuss was a man ahead of his time, and tackled challenging issues in a kid-friendly way, everything from discrimination (The Sneetches) to environmental degradation (The Lorax) to materialism (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) to imperialism (Yertle the Turtle).  The man had a lot to say and understood his audience well enough get the message across without his young readers even realizing it.  As writers, we could learn from that.

So, what Dr. Seuss will you read today?  Horton Hears a Who! . . . If I Ran the Zoo . . . On Beyond Zebra! . . . The Cat in the Hat?

 

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Cool View

Posted on February 27, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

A friend of mine sent this picture from Powell’s Books in Portland:

Wastelands in Powells2That’s Wastelands 2 , which includes my story “Dreams in Dust,” next to Terry Pratchett on the new arrival shelf.  Very cool.

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At the Top of the List

Posted on February 25, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

I have several stories available for reading at a site called Quarterreads.  I’ve posted previously about their new approach to distributing short stories.  Basically a reader pays US$0.25 to read any story from the extensive and ever growing library of short fiction.  It’s up to the reader to select and pay for what they want to read; there’s no editor acting as gate keeper (posted stories go through an approval process, but I believe it’s very modest), and “good” content theoretically rises to the top.  The site has developed a variety of search and recommendation aids to assist readers in finding stories they might like.  I find it all quite interesting.

I check my Quarterread’s author account periodically to see how my handful of stories are doing.  I was pleasantly surprised when I went there today and found this:

Quarterreads

Yup, that’s my story sitting at the top of the science fiction list.  I also had a separate story (“Wheat Kings”) sitting at #12 on the fantasy list.  Pretty cool.

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Wastelands 2 Now Available

Posted on February 24, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

As an author, I’m supposed to push the books and magazines where my stories appear—you know, the business side of things.  Well, this one almost slipped by me, but is one that I’m particularly proud of because I share pages with some of my favorite writers, including George RR Martin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Bruce Sterling, Genevieve Valentine, and David Brin.

Today Wastelands 2, an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction, is available for purchase at all the major online stores (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) and possible even through your local brick-and-mortal bookshop.  From the cover copy:

For decades, the apocalypse and its aftermath have yielded some of the most exciting short stories of all time . . . This companion volume to the critically-acclaimed Wastelands offers thirty of the finest examples of post-apocalyptic short fiction, including works by George R.R. Martin, Junot Díaz, Seanan McGuire, Paolo Bacigalupi, and more. Award-winning editor John Joseph Adams has once again assembled a who’s who of short fiction, and the result is nothing short of mind-blowing.

I’m included in the “and more” part of the author list, but no complaints here.  Wastelands 2 contains my story “Dreams in Dust,” which originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine in 2012.  This story is set on Earth after all water and hope have disappeared, except from one man who believes he carries the information to save both.  If you’re looking for some great fiction, or simply love the apocalypse, pick up a copy of Wastelands 2.  (I’m not sure if I should admit it, but planning to get my fanboy, vanity copy.)

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2014 Nebula Award Nominees (with links)

Posted on February 23, 2015 by D. Thomas Minton

It’s award time again in the science fiction world!  The season kicks off with the 2014 Nebula Award nominations, which were announce late last week by the Science Fictions and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).  While the Nebulas cover many categories, I’m most interested in the short fiction categories, so I’ll cover those today and get to the other award categories in a later post.  Where possible, I’ve supplied links to the stories so you can check out the ones available for free, online reading.

The nominees for best novelette are:

“—–” • “Sleep Walking Now and Then” by Richard Bowes (Tor.com)
“—–” • “The Magician and Laplace’s Demon” by Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld) 
“—–” • “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” by Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF) 
“—–” • “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado (Granta)
“—–” • “We Are the Cloud” by Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed)
“—–” • “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com)

and for short story:

“—–” • “The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) 
“—–” • “When It Ends, He Catches Her” by Eugie Foster (Daily Science Fiction) 
“—–” • “The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” by Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld) 
“—–” • “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik “——–” (Qualia Nous)
“—–” • “A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide” by Sarah Pinsker (F&SF)
“—–” • “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon (Apex)   
“—–” • “The Fisher Queen” by Alyssa Wong (F&SF)   

As always, it’s nice to see publications where I’ve had stories appear get recognized, and equally nice to see some writers I know (if even tangentially) get some deserved recognition.  While the list has many of the “usual suspects” it’s also nice to see a smattering of new names—there are a lot of talented writers working in the speculative fiction field.

As a member of SFWA, I’m eligible to nominate and vote for the Nebula Awards.  I had a rough 2014, but I’m still embarrassed to admit I haven’t read any of the short fiction nominees this year, so I’ve got some reading to do before the voting closes on March 30th.  The winners will be announced in early June.

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