May 2016 – The Library of Dresan

Clockwork Alchemy Schedule

Published May 27, 2016 by centaur

Ahoy, fellow adventurers, if you’re interested in tales from a traveler who’s voyaged far and wide across the sea of unending stories, yet somehow returned to the shores we know, you can come listen to me talk at Clockwork Alchemy this year - I’m on four panels!

Saturday

4PM: Overcoming Writer's Block
Scheduled Presentation Time: Saturday 4pm - 4:50pm
Location: Author's Salon (Monterey Room)

Sunday

10AM: Writing Victorian Sci-Fi
Scheduled Presentation Time: Sunday 10am - 10:50am
Location: Author's Salon (Monterey Room)

12 Noon: The Science of Airships
Scheduled Presentation Time: Sunday Noon - 12:50pm
Location: The Academy (San Martin Room)

2PM: Organizing an Anthology
Scheduled Presentation Time: Sunday 2pm-2:50pm
Location: Author's Salon (Monterey Room)

I’ve given the "Science of Airships" before, and have done panels similar to “Writing Victorian Sci-Fi” and “Organizing an Anthology”, but “Overcoming Writer’s Block” I’ve not presented before to a public audience, so it should be interesting!

Come check it out!

-the Centaur

At Clockwork Alchemy 2016!

Published May 27, 2016 by centaur

Greetings, fellow adventurers! At long last, that time has rolled around again - Clockwork Alchemy, the Bay Area’s premiere steampunk convention. I’ll be here this weekend, most importantly for the launch of THIRTY DAYS LATER!

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SO this year blogging every day was supposed to be a thing, but life is more important, and after taking care of my mom after her knee surgery, being there for my wife, and doing a good job at that thing I do that keeps a roof over our heads and food in the cats’ bellies, the next most important thing was … well, not 30DL, it was THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE!

But that ain’t out yet, as it is still in copyedit. We may go another round on this one. Whatever. I want this book to win the Hugo and I trust my editor, so we’re going to work on it and Get It Right. But AFTER making sure my editor did not send ninjas to have me killed, the next most important thing was launching THIRTY DAYS LATER on time!

THIRTY DAYS LATER is Thinking Ink’s first full length fiction anthology, and we wanted to get this one right, or at least not so wrong that all the books were gone. Now that I am at the con with a giant pile of books, at last, I can breathe easy.

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Oh, and I can finish my slides for Saturday’s presentation. Aaaa!

-the Centaur

Beyond the Fence

Published May 20, 2016 by centaur

Hooray! Thinking Ink Press has a new book out, BEYOND THE FENCE, a collection of short stories by Marilyn Horn! We’ve just got the proof now, but the proof was approved, and we’ll be putting the book into distribution SOON! Also, the art’s by my wife, Sandi Billingsley, and we got a very nice print from Fracture Me of the front cover art:

w00+!

-the Centaur

Finnegan’s Firewall Flashcard

Published May 19, 2016 by centaur

Wow, something awesome just happened. Our publishing company, Thinking Ink Press, independently invented the idea of a postcard short - a flash fiction story on a postcard - and a new one has just been published which really ups the ante in the genre with its postmodern take on a postmodern book, illustrated with a mashup of The Book of Kells and a Nook!

Finnegan's Firewall: Awesome art by my wife Sandi Billingsley, great design by Keiko O'Leary, cool story by David Colby, all in a postcard! Right now you need to get this in person from Thinking Ink, but we’re working on making it possible for you to check it out!

-the Centaur

Two Jeremiah stories reviewed on Publisher’s Weekly

Published May 19, 2016 by centaur

THIRTY DAYS LATER was reviewed on Publisher’s Weekly, and my two stories got a great review:

Each [story in THIRTY DAYS LATER] is broken into two separately titled parts, with events in the second part unfolding 30 days after those in the first. Anthony Francis, in “The Fall of the Falcon/The Rise of the Dragonfly,” uses that interval to work a crafty time-travel paradox into a futuristic tale of “infectious Foreign gearwork” run amok.

THIRTY DAYS LATER officially comes out June 1st, but you can order it now on Amazon! Check it out!

Reading “Solomon’s Baby” at Wednesday’s Flash Fiction Forum

Published May 16, 2016 by centaur

Hey, everyone! I’m reading my flash fiction story “Solomon’s Baby” at the Flash Fiction Forum this Wednesday at 7PM at the Works Gallery in downtown San Jose, which is conveniently located at 365 Market Street underneath the Market Street side of the Convention Center garage (so you will almost certainly be able to find parking!)

"Solomon’s Baby” is a nice little flash of science fiction located at the intersection of Larry Niven and the Twilight Zone, and was previously published online at 365 Tomorrows (if you want spoilers) and hopefully will be released as a Flashcard (short story on a postcard) from Thinking Ink Press later this year. We’ll likely have a variety of short Flashcards and Snapbooks from Thinking Ink Press on hand, as well as some of the fine books put out by this very centaur. Drop by and hear some cool short short fiction!

-the Centaur

Support the HOTBLOOD! Kickstarter

Published May 13, 2016 by centaur

I think it’s in the contract of a guy called “the Centaur” to support the Kickstarter for the HOTBLOOD! comic - “A Centaur in the Old West!” This quirky centaur-themed comic with a “Brokeback Mountain” vibe - about a centaur secretary, his criminally minded boss, their romance, and exploding trains - completed earlier this year, and has already hit its first goal, so the HOTBLOOD! print omnibus will be, well, printed. But now the project’s just 18 hours - and 5 thousand dollars - away from the "stretch goal” which will enable Toril Orlesky to offer for free the sequel comic, Zarco, about the centaur sheriff who will track our two heroes (or villains?) down.

Toril’s art has been becoming increasingly accomplished and ambitious, and I hope you’ll all consider supporting the Kickstarter to bring the sequel to this great project to life!

-the Centaur

They’re Heeere…

Published May 13, 2016 by centaur

It is with an enormous sigh of relief that I can announce that THIRTY DAYS LATER will indeed be available by Clockwork Alchemy!

Above is the stack of books as they arrived at my house today, and below is my smile when I inspected the shipment!

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I don’t even want to start to go into the snafus which happened at the last minute, because they are OVER! I can at last add this to the stack, and move on. More later on how THIRTY DAYS LATER is Thinking Ink Press’s first fiction anthology, how it features the next of the Jeremiah Willstone stories, and why you want to watch out for yaks and Sasquatch … but for now … they’re here!

-the Centaur

Unexpected Complications

Published May 4, 2016 by centaur

So if I haven’t posted here in the past few days it’s because I’ve been FREAKING OUT about an unexpected problem with a project, where two separate contributors had computer failures and travel disruptions. What seemed like a nice, on-time, if tight project became a total freakout O.M.G.-we-may-miss-the-date over the course of a week and a half.

That slow slide off the cliff was halted today and it looks like we’re back on track, but it was touch and go for a while - I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and sent a round of emails trying to get things on track, which worked - but I found out a more experienced coworker had been worried about this last month, and had been trying to say so.

Ah well. Hard lessons. I think it will be fine … but I was motivated to take this picture for this blogpost as I sat here and worked on it, and after a bit, I realized why: it’s another example of unexpected complications. What you see is a giant pile of cat bedding, which didn’t work … because why sleep on something warm, fuzzy, and sheltered when hard shingles will do just fine.

And who could have anticipated that, but a cat. Sigh.

-the Centaur

Posts published in May 2016