Nominated Story Online

The anthology editors John J Adams and Hugh Howey have generously made my Hugo Award nominated story free online. You can read it online in text or download the format of your choice (including the audio). Click Here to read it or download.  The story will also be in the Hugo Nominations packet.

If you enjoy the story, or just love apocalyptic and post apocalyptic fiction, I would urge people to get the whole series. There are many fantastic authors in these anthologies, all of us writing a huge range of different world-endings and situations. Click Here for more information and how to buy the full anthologies.

For information on Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, and/or the Hugo awards, please see the official Sasquan website: http://sasquan.org/

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Final note, comments will be closed on this post. I appreciate all the supportive things people have said over the last terrible week, but I’ve got a book to finish and I need to just move on. I hope I’ve said my piece and made it clear how I feel about this whole mess. I hope everyone who is able to will read as many of the nominated works as they can and vote, and I hope that this weird rift in fandom will be healed. Mary Robinette Kowal and George RR Martin have said very kind, smart things about it all. I urge people to go read the entirety of what GRRM has had to say. He put on a little school about the Hugos and why they matter.

Heartache Release Day!

The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book Five is out today!

Here’s the blurb:

“Life-changing moments are sneaky little bastards. Often we don’t
even know that nothing will be the same until long after, only in
hindsight can we look and say ‘There! That was it! That changed
everything.’
At least we could, if we’re alive to do it.”

Gamer and sorceress Jade Crow’s psychotic ex-boyfriend, Samir, shows up for an epic showdown, and nothing in Wylde will ever be the same.

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Here’s how you get it:

Hugo Nomination and Thoughts

My short story “Goodnight Stars” which appears in The End is NOW edited by John J Adams and Hugh Howey, was nominated for a Hugo.  The story will be in the nomination packet as well as online for free soon now, so that those who wish to read it may. I’m damn proud of this story (the entire set of stories I wrote for the Apocalypse Triptych actually, I think might be some of my best work ever).

I should be dancing about this. Inside, I am a bit. Because it’s a damn good story, maybe the best short story I’ve ever written (and I’ve written over 100 of those things in the last six years).  But this Hugo season is full of controversy, which I’m not going to really talk about, because I find it exhausting and I have better things to do. This will be my only statement about it, if I can help it.

To clarify some things that shouldn’t matter but apparently do:

I am a socialist, if I have to quantify my political leanings. I’d vote Elizabeth Warren into the presidency if she ran, though she’s still not liberal enough for me (but she’s smart enough, too smart to run probably, hah), if that gives an idea of what I mean here.

I am queer in that I am an out bisexual who has had more female partners than male. (I am married and monogamous with a man but still identify as bi because I don’t think who I ended up in love with should matter).

I have two X chromosomes and a vagina. Also boobs. And tattoos (90 hours and counting!).

My nominated story features a non-white female protagonist. Most of my stories do, actually. I think the world is a very interesting and diverse place, I grew up in a multi-ethnic and diverse family, and I don’t see our future becoming less diverse so I choose to write about a world that has as many different people in it as I can dream up.

Honestly, the thought that the above information would change whether or not my story gets read and considered, in either direction, makes me a little sick to my stomach.  I am not so naive, however, that I think we exist in a political and social vacuum. So I figure these things need to be said by me, so that at least the information is out there. People will still make whatever assumptions they want to, and will vote however they want to. That’s out of my control.

What is in my control is how hard I work at my job. I am a professional SF/F writer. I’ve attended more than 20 workshops over the last five years, always striving to deliver better and more awesome stories for my readers. I work my ass off on my craft and on the business side. I’ve sold over thirty short stories to magazines and anthologies. I’ve sold nearly a quarter million books as an indie author.

My job, as I see it, is to write the best damn books I can, books that readers will love and not be able to put down.

I feel that “Goodnight Stars” is one of my best accomplishments. My editors, many reviewers, and my readers have agreed with this.  I think I get as much fan mail about my stories in the Triptych as I do about my bestselling urban fantasy series. So I hope the story gets read and judged on its own merits. If it doesn’t… well… not much will change.

I’ll still be here, working to write better and better books. Because I have the best fans and readers a writer could ask for, supporters who allow me to go on being a full time author and to keep doing my job.

And that is an award nobody can take away from me. 🙂

Summer Update

Hey, things have been quiet around here.  I’ve been doing a bunch of work for some anthologies that will be out next year and later this year.  I’m wrapping that stuff up and expect to have new Gryphonpike novellas out in the next month.

Meanwhile, two new audio books came out today.  Narrated by Christine Padovan (who has done all the GPC novellas so far and does a lovely job), Dead of Knight and The Barrows (the first GPC omnibus collecting the first four novellas) are now available.

New Collection Released

I’ve released a new short story collection.  It’s full of some of my favorite stories and has beautiful cover art done by Tom Edwards.

Description: In this large collection, author Annie Bellet demonstrates her gift for the short form, offering readers twenty short stories, novelettes, and novellas that are compelling, beautifully imagined, and entertaining.

Till Human Voices Wake Us contains 20 stories ranging from hard science fiction to space opera, sword and sorcery to magical realism, some in print for the first time.

Included in this collection are:
Falls the Shadow on Broken Stone
Till Human Voices Wake Us
No Gift of Words
Pele’s Beekeeper
Crawlies
Delilah
No Spaceships Go
All-Purpose Luck
Roping the Mother
Winter’s Bite
Broken Moon
All is Violent, All is Bright
The Scent of Sunlight
Light of the Earth As Seen from Tartarus
Nevermind the Bollocks
Delivering Yaehala
Of Bone and Steel and Other Soft Materials
La Última Esperanza
A Hunter’s Memory of Winter
On Higher Ground

Find it on Amazon for Kindle, or on B&N for Nook, or on Smashwords for every format.

New Collection and Also Music for Writing

First, the business stuffs or whatever.

I have a new fantasy short story collection out.  Here are the shiny details:

A pregnant witch must decide between protecting her heritage and protecting her unborn child… A man looking for a better life learns there is a permanent price attached to change… Grieving for his lost brother, a man faces the mother of all tornadoes with a little magical assistance… When a social worker threatens to break apart her family, a single mother of two must use all her imagination and courage to escape to a better world.

This is a collection of four fantasy short stories from Annie Bellet.  Included are: River Daughter, La Última Esperanza, Roping the Mother, The Scent of Sunlight.

*Bonus Material*
The first five chapters of “A Heart in Sun and Shadow”, a fantasy novel set in a re-imagined ancient Wales.

You can buy it for Kindle here: http://www.amazon.com/River-Daughter-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B005SM8372/

And in all other formats via Smashwords here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/93998

Now, on to what I want to talk about in this post.

Music. Specifically, the music I use when writing.  I’m always curious about what other people listen to while writing (or don’t listen to) but I am not sure I’ve shared some of my favorites.

It often depends on what I’m writing, but generally, I can’t write without music.  I gotta have it.  I prefer music without English or Spanish words (or at least pretty incomprehensible lyrics if they are in a language I understand).  But instead of just waxing on forever about this band or that song or whatever, I figured I’d just post some links so you can listen to things yourself.

For writing SF, lately I’ve been totally hooked on the Halo 3: ODST soundtrack.  Listen to this and tell me it doesn’t make you want to go write something full of spaceships and brave people and guns and stuff:

I’ve also been listening to the Bastion game soundtrack a ton.  You can get the soundtrack (or listen to it) here: http://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/

For writing fantasy, especially epic-feeling fantasy, Two Steps from Hell is pretty much the winner.  Listen to this and then go write a giant sword fight or sweeping reunion among long-lost companions: 

In general, I’ve been enamored of the Red Sparowes lately:

And for writing romances or fantasy or pretty much anything highly emotional scenes, you can’t go wrong with anime soundtracks.  I really love the work of Yoko Kanno:

So that’s the story with me and writing music.  The right song while writing a scene can help me tap into the emotional core I’m looking for or help me visualize the story I’m telling.  I don’t know how people write without music.  It works for some. Just not for me.

By the way, I’m always on the lookout for more writing music.  So if anyone has suggestions of things I might not have heard of, don’t be afraid to post some links in the comments.

Writers of the Future Q3 Results

The first Honorable Mention list for 2010 Q3 has been posted here: http://www.writersofthefuture.com/node/636

My name is on it.  Got a very nice email notifying me (first time I’ve gotten an email for just an Honorable Mention).

It would be lying to say I’m not disappointed.  I really, really like the story I submitted for Q3 and think it’s one of the strongest I’ve written.  It’s also novelette length, which means there’s a shorter market list for it.  And near-future hard sci/fi, which makes that list even shorter.  But it is back out to another market now, so here’s hoping it fares better among the magazines than it did in the contest.

Good luck to anyone who hasn’t heard yet (or got the phone call), and best wishes and e-hugs to those of us now looking ahead to Q4.

WotF 2nd Quarter Results

Well, I didn’t get a phone call.

But I’m a semi-finalist. Wee! Step in the right direction.  (Too bad I’m 90% sure my Q3 entry will be disqualified based on inclusion of a song lyric. Oh well. )

So yeah, that was sorta a shock, considering I’d heard nothing at all from Joni or anything.  But hey, getting a critique from KD is pretty awesome and way way better than the straight reject I thought I was getting.

Now, to go write something more awesome than anything ever for Q4!

Getting Over Lazy

I’ve been writing a fair amount in the last month, but when I looked at the results in terms of finishing projects, it doesn’t look so good.  I’ve finished two things in the last month. Two.  Not exactly on target with where I want to be by the end of the year.  It’s time to quit being lazy and work on the second of Heinlein’s Rules: finish what you write.

It’s easy for me to finish short stories generally.  Once I’m writing one, I tend to just get it done (usually within one or two sittings).  Novels are tougher to finish, though the endings so far of them are a lot easier than the beginnings and middles.  I’ve been tinkering between two novels lately, getting some done on each but not really making huge progress with either.  Part of this is fear.  Once I’m done, I have to send it out.  I’ve worked out a way to overcome that fear by putting together the package for each novel before I finish, so at least that part of the work will be done so I can just focus on getting the book done.

The other part of this is just sheer laziness.  I like to work in bursts, when stuff “comes” to me because I’m lazy and making my brain focus and compose is annoying if I’m not in the mood.  Yep, just lazy.  I know it is laziness because if I have deadlines (real or imagined), I have no problem dumping the “must be in the mood” and getting the work done.  I think I can combat my current lazy with some good old habit-forming.  I like to take days off writing, but for the next while, I’m not going to.  I think I need to build up a nice streak, get in the habit of not letting myself take days off (usually I justify days off because I know I *can* write 10k words in a day to catch up if I have to).  So starting today, I’m going to get in at least 3,900 words of fiction a day at least 6 days a week, with the seventh day goal being 1,250 words.  At that pace I should be able to finish everything I want to finish by the end of the year.  It really doesn’t help that I keep adding things I’d like to finish to my project list.

When I started out this year, I was thinking I’d write four novels and get to 30 or so short stories out to markets.  Then I kept having novel ideas, so it turned into five novels.  Then because of a conversation at one of the workshops, I decided I was going to aim for 80 short stories on top of that.  I’ve since revised that down to 40 or so shorts, not because I don’t think I could write 80, but because at 27 I’m already a little sick of the admin work of keeping track of them so I don’t accidentally sim-sub or something that I think 40-50 will be the max I want to track at a time (and it’ll be a level that, god forbid, if I start selling some, I can replace them).  And on top of that, the novel ideas just keep pouring in.  I’ve shunted four over to next year already.  I’m aiming at seven this year (two of which are shorter, one 50k, one 65-75k).  Frankly, I’d love to slow down, but my brain won’t let me.  See why I can’t afford to continue being fearful and lazy?  I don’t have time!  At the least I’ll be getting a lot of practice in and hopefully improving.

Current projects and current word count:

MG novel- ~12k

Suspense/Crime novel- ~8k

Sci/fi novel- ~7k

Sekrit Experiment project- ~1k

Paranormal Mystery, Horror Western, Irish Historical, and Regency Romance- no words yet

Also have one novella that stands at ~1300 words and another that had nearly 5k on it (which I haven’t touched in a year since I really need to redraft the whole beginning, grr).

So… plenty to finish.  I should get on that.

But I Get Up Again

I never realized how stuck I’d gotten after writing that story that just failed.  I’ve started and not finished three stories in the last week.  Not finished.  I usually finish shorts in one sitting.  It’s the novels I poke at (and I’m poking, I’m poking.  Gotta get the MG one done soon, seriously).  I got stuck because I’m afraid that every word is more fail.

Fuck it. Seriously.  So I failed. That story really doesn’t work at all and nothing will save it (maybe the setting, the setting might, the setting is good.)  I have to get over that.  Move past it.  It’s so easy to dwell on what doesn’t work, what feels or reads wrong.  I think my academic side lets me down here, because I’ve been trained to pick things apart.  It’s time to get back up.  The mini self-inflicted rollercoaster of “I suck!” and “I might not suck!” annoys me.  It’s stupid and it is stopping my writing.

In 11 minutes I turn 29.  I hope that someday I’ll look back at my 20s as the years it really started.  Addicts have their sobriety dates, I guess writers have their “got serious” dates.  Mine is Feb 4th 2009.  I’ve got a year left of my 20s.  I want to make it a good one, one where I did everything in my power to reach my goals.  For my birthday I wrote myself a check and dated it Feb 4th, 2020.  I won’t say the amount, but it is fairly ambitious, at least I hope.  As I enter the final year of this decade of life, I want to know that I didn’t let the little things get me down.  And that when they did, I got back up.

Now, I should go practice what I preach and finish some damn stories.  Because no one is going to buy stuff I haven’t written and submitted.