The World Science Fiction Convention - aka Worldcon among fandom - is being held in Seattle this year (in about a month from when I’m writing this). Karawynn and I will be there. We used to live in Seattle so this will a bit of a homecoming, and I very much look forward to reconnecting with friends (both local and skiffy)… assuming we arrive without incident.1

Not a panelist this time

Which is all well and good. I don’t have anything to promote and the expertise I’d bring may well be out of date and/or other panelists are just as good or better. Worldcon has a ton of great panelists, many of whom are friends or professional acquaintances. There are literally hundreds of panels.

Finding me

If you’re going and want to meet up, leave a comment here, or message me, and I’ll try to make that happen. Worldcon is huge and while serendipitous meetings are possible (and can be fun), such things are unreliable by definition.

I started to look at the massive list of panels to see if there are any that I will definitely be attending. And no, it is too much, I can’t even sum up. That said, here are some likely places:

• Martha Wells Q&A

• Shannon Page reading

• Hotel bar with outdoor seating - Hyatt Regency

• More TBA

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It’s why I wrote so much cyberpunk as a fledgling writer. Cool and edgy with blurred ethics. So different from the black-and-white, hero’s journey morality of Star Wars — which I also loved, but which didn’t make me think about humanity and life and who deserves to live and die.

Compared to many writers, I came to love the craft fairly late. I was raised by scientists, was on a college track towards becoming a doctor or a research geneticist, when a friend dared me to fill a vacant slot in my class schedule with a short story writing class. This eventually led me to take all the creative writing courses the university offered and add English as a second major. So what if it added a year to school?

Collaboration

It was good that I didn’t drop biology since that was the main reason I actually landed a job out after college. But with a full-time day job and no deadlines, I stopped writing. Until a friend—Jonathan Bond—challenged me to collaborate with him. Our brainstorming sessions, inspired by a few pages of his initial drafts, were epic. We created a whole world, outlined several multi-novel story arcs, and wrote dozens of short stories and over a million words on novels. Jonathan and I were natural collaborators. We had a blast and made some good (and some not so good) art.

Most of those million words went into the trunk, never to see the light of day. But we got better, and we started submitting stories to magazines until—finally—in 1992, our first story was published in Amazing Stories.

Deadwise

Vibes are strong in this fast-paced mystery/adventure—a cyberpunk novella that features young Sly on the run from a mythical, jacked-up assassin. Sly has no idea why Deadwise wants to kill him; she’s been in hiding for years. What would bring her out now and can he escape her long enough to find out why she wants him dead?

Jonthan and I went on to publish more short stories and novels, both in collaboration and separately, but we’ll always have a special place in our hearts for Deadwise.

Now, after years of being hard to find or unavailable, you can read it again. Buy it from your vendor of choice: $0.99 at kobo, play, and b&n, and $2.99 at amazon. The cost is higher on amazon because for low prices they take a much higher percentage.

… Or you can get a free copy by subscribing to Dear Future. (Both free and paid tiers get Deadwise. Paid tiers also get a copy of my novel Liferock.)

The Deadwise universe

Sly is a boy recovering from experimental brain surgery after a hover car accident when a cyber-enhanced killer attacks him in the hospital. Rose is a teen who helps Sly get away, and together they unwind the mystery of why someone is trying to encode new memories into Sly’s mind… and why the assassin, Deadwise, has emerged from years of hiding to kill him before that happens.

Cyberpunk has always been about the blend of tech and biology. It’s also been at the forefront of gritty science fiction. In Deadwise, Jonathan and I blend these elements and push them. Molecular biology and cybernetics and ghosts in the machine—they’re all in there.

While Deadwise is gritty and dark and dystopic (like the worlds of Gibson and PK Dick), it’s not unmitigated bleakness. Orwell’s 1984 is one of my favorite books of all time, but damn does it suck the hope out of the world. In my own writing, I like to offer at least a glimmer of light in the dark.

Check out Deadwise.

I borrowed heavily from Blade Runner for my new Shadowrun novella, “Burns Twice as Bright” (featured in Shadowrun: Through the Decades). Astute readers will find a number of references, both obvious and subtle. There are so many great lines in the script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. So many!

Shadowrun Again?

It’s been 25 years since I wrote anything set in the Shadowrun universe. I’d made my mark with five (5!) novels (one in collaboration), and was happy to let the younger and more enthusiastic cadre of writers move things along. But… but I’ve always loved the Shadowrun universe and its unabashed blend of magic and technology. So, when Jennifer Brozek and John Helfers asked for a new story, I got excited about it… especially because I could tell a tale about the origin of my most well-known character.

Ryan Mercury

Famous or infamous? For the epic trilogy — The Dragon Heart Saga — I needed a main character that was ultra-capable, iconic, and larger-than-life. The events surrounding the assassination of the great dragon Dunkelzahn were on such a scale that the protagonist had to be resourceful, high-powered, and plain badass.

So I invented Ryan Mercury — special agent, prime runner, and Dunkelzahn’s most accomplished (and previously unknown) trusted asset. In Stranger Souls, Ryan is already at that level… he had to be because of the level of the antagonists.

Reader reaction was mixed. A lot of them enjoyed an expansive, world-changing story and characters. But Shadowrun had mostly focused on the street-level runners, working in the gray spaces between monolithic corporations and governments. Ryan wasn’t street level. A significant (and understandable) response from fans was that he was a Gary Stu — a perfect, too good, wish-fullfillment stand in for the author. They had a point; Ryan wasn’t perfect, but he was a far cry from a flawed, shades-of-gray shadowrunner.

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Burns Twice as Bright

In my new story, I was happy for the chance to tell some of Ryan’s backstory before the critical, world events of the Dragon Heart Saga. I got to show his imperfections, his mistakes, and (most importantly) his relationship with someone who helped shape him into who he becomes later. I loved it.

At the same time, I got to show how Ryan was involved behind the scenes in some of the events prior to Dunkelzahn’s death. Cameos include Maria Mercurial, Henequen, the Universal Brotherhood, Nadja Daviar, and of course “Mr. D.” himself.

Pick up a copy and let me know your thoughts.

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In the 1990s and early 2000s, selling to one of the big-five (or was it six back then?) was the only path to a fiction writing career, which is what I wanted. Times have changed a bit, and self-publishing is pretty easy now. It’s a valid option for a lot of authors, although because it’s so easy there are a ton of books flooding the market. Being noticed is harder than it ever has been, and that’s true even for books published by the major publishing houses.

This is so bad that independent publisher Berrett-Koehler has a list of The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing (it’s pretty depressing). And DongWon Song—a well-known and successful agent has an entire blog called Publishing is Hard. DongWon’s writings are pragmatic advice about how to survive in publishing. They’re more hopeful, but the underlying truth is that while being published is easier than ever, being widely read is harder. And this is especially true for new(er) authors like me, because 1) even though I’ve published seven novels, that was a long time ago and they were targeted to a niche audience; and 2) most of the books that are getting big pushes are from already established ‘big-name’ authors.

Much like capitalism in general, whether someone succeeds is not directly related to how good their work is. Neither capitalism nor publishing are a meritocracy. It’s a given that a book is good—that’s the entry level for getting a publishing contract. But whether it does well and sells a lot of copies depends a great deal on other factors, like the cover art and design, the marketing plan, sales efforts, and ultimately whether booksellers like the whole package.

In fact, in their awesome and informative podcast—Publishing Rodeo—new authors Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford discuss why (even though they each had a debut novel published in the same year by the same publisher) one of them got the VIP treatment while the other was neglected.

I recently completed a novel manuscript set in my own science fictional world. It’s likely the best thing I’ve ever written, and I’m going to publish it myself or sell the rights to a publisher. My aim is different than it was a couple decades ago; I no longer care as much about the money and earning a living as I do about sharing my stories as widely—and with as many people—as possible.

There used to be just one path to publishing a book, and now there are several. Even so, after reviewing my options and what I want for this book and my career ahead, I think the best path for me is to seek an agent and submit the novel to the major houses in a quest for a substantial contract. It’s a long shot, but I figure Go Big or Go Home.

Wish me luck.

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