I’ve been a bit silent since I launched Shades & Shapes in the Dark. That’s largely because I’m busy working on both the Audiobook edition (it’s an enormous amount of work but about 3/4ths done) and the sequel Through and Endless Darkness Gleaming!
But there’s something else I’ve been working on. Some of you may already know about my podcast with Matt Wellstrom,Resistance Reads (the link will take you to past episodes on all your favorite services) but, at a party recently I was asked to do another book based podcast. The name that Athena Huff-Sandstrom and I came up with was Literatura Obscura. This podcast focuses on strange, unusual, or lesser known fiction.
We will be launching the first episode live on YouTube on July 9th with the book, The House of Leaves, an horror novel about… well… it’s a bit difficult to describe but it’s definitely unusual.
Episode 5 of Resistance Reads airs live on YouTube on July 6th and will cover the classic John Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath. We love it when people join us for the live stream.
Want to get the book early and for free? I’m looking for 17 more Advanced Review Copy (ARC) readers. Basically, you let me know you want a copy by commenting below or shooting me an email and I’ll send you a copy in exchange for an honest review (yes even if you hate it).
The second piece of news is that me and my good friend Matt Wellstrom are launching a brand new podcast called, Resistance Reads. The podcast will explore the concepts of power and resistances through literature. Our inaugural episode will cover George Orwell’s classic novel 1984.
You can join us at the livestream here on April 19th at 11am MDT out of Denver. https://youtube.com/live/AqlLzQvCBBU?feature=share You can also watch the replay at the same link. Come join our discussion and ask your questions!
Hey all, I know it’s been a while since I have had updates so I have several things to post about today. Sorry for the long message, but I’ve broken things down so you can easily skim to the information you want.
The first is the reason that things are so delayed. This summer I joined Teach for America and last month I officially became a High School English and Language Arts teacher for 11th and 12th grade. Let me tell you, that’s an extremely busy job.
Despite the very long hours I am working right now, I’ve managed to make a lot of steady progress on my forthcoming novels. I am currently on a streak of 574 days or writing without skipping. 500 or so of those days had a minimum of 1000 words a day. So I make progress on something every single day (though I must admit at least 50 of those days I deleted the words right after I finished them but hey, you gotta get those bad words out of the way for the good ones to shine).
Here is the current status of my books that I am actively working on:
Shades and Shapes in the Dark is currently in it’s final pass before it heads off to the editor. ETA for book 1 is either October 17th or November 17th depending on the amount of edits required (How much red pen my editor uses).
The series is now 4 books with the following titles and progress level:
Book 1 “Shades and Shapes in the Dark” is in final edits with an ETA in October or November.
Book 2 “Though An Endless Darkness Gleaming” is 75% of Draft 1
Book 3: “An Illumination of Extraordinary Madness” is 50% of Draft 1
Book 4: “The Nature of Twilight At Dawn” is 30% of Draft 1
I currently expect to finish draft 1 of Book 2 by November 1st and to use NaNoWriMo to finish (or get close to finishing) the first draft of book 3
The Children of AEIS and The Chronicles of the Great Migration final two books, A War For the Heavens and A Hand to the Stars are still on their way. The Children of AEIS is sitting at around 75% first draft completion. The largest reason for the delay was a major concussion only two months after the release of Serah of the Runners. This derailed me pretty solidly and right now, when I have free time on top of writing, I am working through creating notes of the 4 books because my memory of them appears to be a little lacking from first the injury and then the passage of time. But, they are in progress and they absolutely will get finished sometime in the near future.
Welcoming the Muse
My poetic essay, Writing is Living was selected for publication by Twenty Bellows Press this summer. The piece is about life as an author in the 21st century. There will be a release party sometime this fall and I will provide more information as the date approaches. Needless to say, I’m thrilled to have another short of mine published this year. That makes 2 short pieces of writing picked up by publishers.
How to Write for the Future Podcast
I also recently appeared on a second episode of Write for the Future. This podcasts covers some basics of worldbuilding. The host also spent time across several episodes highlighting some of the key features of Kyra Wellstrom and I’s book, Build Better Worlds. I have linked the second episode where I guest starred as well as the episodes that surround our book below.
My last piece of news is that back in July I was asked to teach a session at the Creative Colorado Writers Retreat hosted by Twenty Bellows Publishing Company. I feel so honored to be a part of this retreat as it includes some of the most talented and knowledgeable writers in Denver.
That’s it for updates (I know there were a lot). I’m confident my next update will be release news! I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend (if you’re American and reading this).
A few months back I went on the How to Write the Future Podcast, to talk about my co-written book, Build Better World: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers and the process of creating fictional worlds. This will be the first of a two part podcast.
A few weeks ago I went on the UK based Open Minded Podcast to talk about Anthropology. On Episode 36 titled “What It Means to Be an Individual” We covered a variety of concepts and it was fun and very organic conversation. You can find it below.
This last fall I was a guest on three podcasts. Two of those podcasts have gone live already. The final one just came out yesterday and is live on YouTube. I had a lot of fun on this episode. We talked about a whole host of different topics on life, culture, anthropology, art, AI, change, and the future. Check out our conversation at the link below
Hey readers, Yesterday I went on the Colorado Switchblade Podcast and talked about my work as a media researcher, an anthropologist, storytelling, and the value of community and art. It was a fun conversation with Jason Van Tatenhove, who may have even seen on places like CNN and Dr. Phil. Check it out, and definitely check out the Switchblade, it’s doing some really interesting stuff.
For a while now I’ve been really focusing on thinking about alternatives to our current, political, economic, and social systems. In that vein, I’ve been reading a lot of books and articles that challenge the apparent inevitability of our current global system. The more I’ve read, the more I realized there are a lot of people in the past and present who are spending time looking at other ways of approaching social organization in this world. There is also a ton of archeological evidence out there now that increasingly demonstrates that the classic story of how humans organized in the early days of our species is nothing more than modern mythology, and that things were, and are, a lot more complicated than historians, economists, political scientists, and others would have us believe.
Some of these ideas are radical and game-changing, some of these ideas are experiments of the imagination. But, I wanted to create a space for people to engage with them, that’s accessible and public. Because everything humans do is complex, and what we imagine matters. So, I’ve decided to launch a new podcast. The podcast is called Re-Weaving. I wanted people to think about how this world is woven together, and how, if we choose, we can unravel some of the toxic systems and approaches and, as communities, weave things back together.
For now, it will be a once-a-month thing that starts as a live stream on YouTube and then will be uploaded to other podcast services after we have recorded. This allows for public engagement and questions during the live stream for anyone who is participating.
My first episode will go live this coming Monday, June 26th at 7 pm. I will be speaking with the Author and Game Designer Joshua L. Stelling for his unique book called The Organomic Manifesto and discuss his ideas for a radically different approach to economics. You can join us live, or watch the replay on YouTube or other podcast sites (I am working on getting other sites set up at the moment).
A few weeks ago, my co-author Kyra Wellstrom and I recorded an episode with Indie Book Talk. The podcast episode was a lot of fun. We talked about worldbuilding, anthropology, and writing more generally. The episode is on the shorter side (only 24 minutes) so it’s a great discussion of the lot of the things we do in a quick and interesting episode. The episode came out this morning!
Loridian's Laboratory 