LibertyCon 37

It appears to be official that I will be appearing as a pro at LibertyCon 37 in Chattanooga, June 22-24, 2025.  I imagine I will have a reading, a couple of panels, and a couple of Author Alley slots.  Programming isn’t yet complete, of course, but in general that’s what author guests tend to do.

This will be my first appearance at LC as a pro.  I started attending as a regular attendee in 2019 and haven’t missed an in-person version since (2020 was cancelled and 2021 was online).  I finally worked up the nerve to ask to attend as an author guest after talking to a couple of folks at the con’s Kaffeeklatsch last year.  (“You’ve written and published 18 books?  I’d say you qualify,” said one of them.)  As a massive introvert at heart, I am shaking in my boots at the prospect of sitting in front of audiences, but as a guy who actually does enjoy a certain amount of social activity (followed by downtime to recharge), I’m looking forward to this new experience.

(Though, I don’t know who I’m trying to kid; I’ve sat in front of audiences any number of times and run meetings.  It’s just a different kind of meeting, and the audience won’t have elected me to sit in front of them and do that 🙂 )

It will be interesting to see the con from a different side.  Looking forward to it.

On Account of a Dame is live!

The novella referred to in the previous post is done and up for purchase or free to read on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

Arrgh.

About a week ago I had a weird dream and I noted it in a particular place, this way:

So I was in New York City, attending a Masonic conference and a sci-fi convention in the same hotel. I was wearing a three-piece suit and was armed to the teeth. And then I woke up, puzzled that I was in New York but glad I’d had the foresight to arm myself if I was going to be anywhere near the city.

I think I need to stop taking Benadryl at night.

This may or may not have been a mistake, because a certain well-known SF author of my acquaintance then said:

D*MN it Fuzzy.

If you don’t write a noir-feel short starting that way

I’m going to come through the internet and make you

I was about to type “beat you” BUT I don’t want to piss off Sally

but that paragraph? GREAT VOICE.

Continue please.

Now.

Well, shit.

Thus was the genesis of the (currently) 8,000 word noir-ish epic I’m calling On Account of a Dame.  It’s an attempt to see if I can write a complete novella of between 10K and 20K words.  It’s about halfway done so apparently I can.  It even fits into my Timelines universe, so there.

And all of my other characters are yelling at me furiously because I am ignoring them.

So I always generate images before I start writing, and during the writing, because it helps me visualize the characters better.  Here are a few of the ones I’ve generated this time.  First, Tiffany Frelinghuysen Delafield — the titular Dame.

Next, the Tong Queen (for whom I haven’t yet imagined a name, but will have to, since she’s going to be on stage in a couple more paragraphs)…

Finally, our hero the detective.  Maybe.  I don’t like the way MidJ is generating his suits, this is the best one so far, and really the only one that looks like a real three-piece suit.

Oh, and his valet and, as he says, “Kato to [his] Green Hornet,” Gunther.

I have no real idea what I’ll do with this story, but I have to finish it first anyway.

What’s happening?

Well, there are three things on the stove at the moment.

  • I started writing The Clerics in the Kitchen, which is a Delaney story I hinted at in A Dragon in the Foie Gras.
  • Then I started writing The Lion and the Logic, which is the next main series novel.
  • Then I started getting an itch to write in Apocalyptic Japan again, and that caused me to start writing In the Cherry Blossom’s Shade, the sequel to An American in Iya.

And now they’re all just…simmering.  *insert crying face emoji here*

I think that not feeling well for about the past week is part of why that is, but we’ll see.

An American in Iya is released!

It’s alive! In e-book edition, oh my!  (Paperback and hardback will be along after I get my proof copies to make sure the formatting is right.)

Over 200 years ago, a Plague overran the world, and 9 out of 10 human beings died.

In a small Japanese village on Shikoku, a group of American tourists found themselves stranded — and in grave danger of being murdered, merely for the sin of being 外人 (gaijin).

Luckily for them, their Japanese hosts took pity on their plight, and took them in as their own.

This is the story of their descendants — who still, more than anything, wish only someday to go home.  That is . . .

. . . if they still have a home to return to.

Whew

I finished the draft of An American in Iya tonight.  82,829 words.

Now for the full read-through and self-castigation about choices I made throughout…

WiP: An American in Iya

This is still a work in progress, so don’t get excited.  Well, sure, get excited, but have patience while I write about four more chapters.

I haven’t talked much about this book, which is foreshadowed in Chapter 16 of The Tale of the Crane Princess (page 198 of the print edition which probably nobody has but me):

“Here is an interesting tidbit,” remarked Terada, the next day at battalion headquarters in Imabari Castle.  He handed a report to Akira, who read it, then arched an eyebrow.

Hontō?  I always wondered what happened to tourists and resident foreigners after the Plague struck and they were marooned here.  There are so few gaijin – or I suppose I should say, identifiable gaijin – in Japan today, I think most people believe they simply died out.  Though there are some rather chilling rumors about how foreigners were targeted by the survivors, simply because they were foreigners.”  Akira sighed, and sat back, rubbing his eyes.  “Of course, there is no way to prove the rumors true or false, at this remove.”

“Apparently a group of Americans were in Iya Valley on a tour in 2020.  They simply hid until after the worst of the Plague, and then stayed there, afraid of what might happen if they showed their faces.  Our people there seem to taken pity on them, protected them, and have remained silent until now.  Truly good people, if so.”

“Assisted by the fact that Iya is one of the most isolated places on Shikoku.  Nobody would be going there after the Plague.  I suppose it’s not particularly hard to get to, per se, but people had better sources from which to scavenge without going deep into the mountains.”

I’m currently 16 chapters in on the real story of what was going on in the Iya Valley at that point.  Needless to say, there is a pretty girl (for some reason I like strong female characters, sue me) who is the first person the JIDF troops run into on their way into town, and who is the main protagonist of the story.  People who will be familiar to you from previous forays into Timeline 1287 Left Sub 6 will pop in here and there, in particular Yamaguchi Yukiko, who becomes a mentor to the young protagonist.  The back cover blurb currently goes like this:

Over 200 years ago, a Plague overran the world, and 9 out of 10 human beings died.

In a small Japanese village on Shikoku, a group of American tourists found themselves stranded — and in grave danger of being murdered, merely for the sin of being 外人 (gaijin).

Luckily for them, their Japanese hosts took pity on their plight, and took them in as their own.

This is the story of their descendants — who still, more than anything, wish only someday to go home.  That is . . .

. . . if they still have a home to return to.

At any rate, this is the first of two books that will eventually continue the story I was in the process of telling at the end of The Tale of the Crane Princess.

It has been a very interesting piece of writing, because of the research I’m doing continuing to surprise me about the potential capabilities of a small community that has self-isolated in an area that is already very hard to access in the middle of Shikoku.  For instance (and I am talking about my 23rd Century characters, not the 21st Century actual inhabitants, so take some of this with a large grain of shio):

  • One of the biggest surprises I had is that they don’t grow rice, at least not in any great quantity, because the mountainsides are literally too steep to terrace.  So rice gets replaced by millet, which is farmed up the sides of the mountains using rather unique techniques.  They also have a local potato varietal, and they grow soybeans and other garden vegetables.  There probably isn’t much beef because there is no pasture land to speak of — I postulate that my 23rd Century inhabitants have a small herd of cows for milk and a bull or two to service them — but the area also has wild boar and deer in sufficient abundance that, pre-Plague, it was known for its hunting.  I presume they also have chickens and other such small food animals, e.g., quail.  And they get tasty trout (amego) out of the Iya River and apparently out of local fish-farm hatcheries.  So they eat fairly well.
  • There is [pre-Plague] no high school (or junior high school) in their closed-area.  They had to rebuild the one that was apparently torn down in the early 21st century so they could teach their children.  Which they do rather well, for reasons you’ll find out in the book.
  • They still have a lot of modern conveniences, because after the Plague died down, and before they closed themselves off (for reasons which will become apparent in the book), they sent out expeditions to scrounge the countryside for things they would need in the future.
  • They spend a lot of time clearing bamboo and kudzu.  Particularly bamboo that sprouts in the middle of the under-used roadways that regular pre-Plague traffic and road maintenance normally took care of.  But also kudzu that grows up the power poles and everything else.
  • They are extremely dependent on two nearby dams for hydroelectricity (but that’s why they have electricity, 200 years on).  And those dams are highly-dependent on a massive pipeline system running the length of the Iya Valley that seems to bring water from one reservoir to the next to provide sufficient water for the generators.  I would love to find out more about this, but so far I have found nothing useful about the system, which probably dates from the 1920s or 1930s.  There are sites in both English and Japanese that talk about the dams — apparently there is a niche collector hobby in Japan where you tour dams and get your dam card stamped or whatever — but not about the intriguing tunnel system that supplies water to their reservoirs.

There’s probably more I could write about it, but this post is overly long already and most of it is covered in the book anyway…

The Lion and the Darkness is now an e-book!

Three years in the writing, it’s finally done, and it’s up for purchase, or read free on KU.  Paperback and hardback editions are coming soon live as of 7 June.

The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Lion in Paradise

At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.

As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?

As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.

[updated 7 Jun 2024]

State of the Author

Indiana.

No, seriously…sigh.

Way back in September I published one of these “State of the Author” things in which I bemoaned the fact that I had five projects running through my head.  This is something in the way of an update on that post.

1. The Lion and The Darkness — this is the next novel in the mainstream Timelines series.  Got unstuck a while back, have 16 chapters finished and four or five to go.  I hope to finish and publish before LibertyCon 36 in June 2024.  (Actually I hope to finish and publish by the end of May, but I’m hedging.)

2. The Dragon’s SisterFinished and published, e-book and soft cover.  October 10, 2023.

3. An American in Iya (working title) — this is a novel that follows The Tale of the Crane Princess in the Timelines Universe track.  It’s foreshadowed in Tale, at the very end.  This book is 10+ chapters in, and will likely be first of two following the exploits of (currently) 16-year-old Saori Rin Sumisu.  I do not intend to write yet another doorstop like The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (which really should have been two books), if I can help it.

4. The isekai light novel “Help! Truck-kun Won’t Leave Me Alone, No Matter What World I’m In!” hasn’t been touched in months; I don’t know if I’m actually going to complete it or not.

5. The novella/light novel All Precious Stones and Peoples is on hold until after the novel AFTER The Lion and The Darkness, which is supposed to be The Lion and The Logic.

So, bottom line, there’s one novel almost finished that’s been hanging fire since 2022, a novella/light novel finished last October, and another novel that might see the light of day by the end of 2024.  One light novel that may or may not be written, and another novella/light novel in the future to follow The Lion and The Logic.  *whew*