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Posts tagged as “Clockwork Alchemy”

Announcing 30 DAYS LATER, a Steampunk Anthology

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The small press I’m associated with, Thinking Ink Press, has just announced its first anthology, 30 DAYS LATER, edited by A.J. Sikes, B.J. Sikes, and Dover Whitecliff of the Treehouse Writers’ Group! Check out the Thinking Ink Press announcement for more details, but it should be coming out around the time of the Clockwork Alchemy conference this May.

-the Centaur

Pictured: A clock, image credit: Deutsche Fotothek, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Not the cover or anything, just something I liked - we’re saving the cover reveal.

Welcome to 2016

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Hi, I’m Anthony! I love to write books and eat food, activities that I power by fiddling with computers. Welcome to 2016! It’s a year. I hope it’s a good one, but hope is not a strategy, so here’s what I’m going to do to make 2016 better for you.

First, I’m writing books. I’ve got a nearly-complete manuscript of a steampunk novel JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE which I’m wrangling with the very excellent editor Debra Dixon at Bell Bridge Books. God willing, you’ll see this come out this year. Jeremiah appears in a lot of short stories in the anthologies UnCONventional, 12 HOURS LATER, and 30 DAYS LATER - more on that one in a bit.

I also have completed drafts of the urban fantasy novels SPECTRAL IRON and HEX CODE, starring Dakota Frost and her adopted daughter Cinnamon Frost, respectively. If you like magical tattoos, precocious weretigers, and the trouble they can get into, look for these books coming soon - or check out FROST MOON, BLOOD ROCK and LIQUID FIRE, the first three Dakota books. (They’re all still on sale, by the way).

Second, I’m publishing books. I and some author/artist friends in the Bay Area founded Thinking Ink Press, and we are publishing the steampunk anthology 30 DAYS LATER edited by Belinda Sikes, AJ Sikes and Dover Whitecliff. We’re hoping to also re-release their earlier anthology 12 HOURS LATER; both of these were done for the Clockwork Alchemy conference, and we’re proud to have them.

We’re also publishing a lot more - FlashCards and InstantBooks and SnapBooks and possibly even a reprint of a novel which recently went out of print. Go to Thinking Ink Press for more news; for things I’m an editor/author on I’ll also announce them here.

Third, I’m doing more computing. Cinnamon Frost is supposed to be a mathematical genius, so to simulate her thought process I write computer programs (no joke). I’ve written up some few articles on this for publication on this blog, and hope to do more over the year to come.

Fourth, I’m going to keep doing art. Most of my art is done in preparation for either book frontispieces or for 24-Hour Comics Day, but I’m going to step that up a bit this year - I have to, if I’m going to get (ulp) three frontispieces done over the next year. Must draw faster!

Finally, I’m going to blog more. I’m already doing it, right now, but one way I’m trying to get ahead is to write two blog posts at a time, publishing one and saving one in reserve. This way I can keep getting ahead, but if I fall behind I’ve got some backlog to fall back on. I feel hounded by all the ideas in my head, so I’m going to loose them on all of you.

As for New Year’s Resolutions? Fah. I could say “exercise more, blog every day, and clean up the piles of papers” but we all know New Year’s Resolution’s are a joke, unless your name is Jim Davies, in which case they’re performance art.

SO ANYWAY, 2016. It’s going to be a year. I hope we can make it a great one!

-the Centaur

Pictured: The bookshelves of Cafe Intermezzo in the Atlanta airport, one place where I like to write books and eat food.

Taking Stock

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What you see above are (almost) all the author's copies I have of all the published fiction I've written. Why am I taking stock of all this now? Well, at Clockwork Alchemy, this happened:

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I sold many, many other copies of my books and a solid dozen copies of FROST MOON - nearly cleaning out my stock of my first novel. I'd ordered twenty when LIQUID FIRE came out, but between that dozen, a few for a shelf at work, and a box that I sent to BayCon, I was left with just two of them. Time to order more.

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I'm in the writing game for the long haul, so I generally order 20-30 copies of any book or anthology that my work is published in (less or more if the publisher has a deal on sending a specific amount). Generally, north of 20 is a good number - I just sold out of 20 FROST MOON, but it can take a few years to sell out of 30 copies of an anthology. Your mileage may vary.

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Along with the books are piles of swag, postcards, t-shirts and various display materials which I organize into boxes so they can easily be taken to conventions. After several iterations of this, I've grown to keeping the stock in one big box, the swag in another box, keeping an empty "useful box" for extra copies on the first day of a convention (or a few copies for a smaller event like a signing) and all the oversized books and display materials needed at a full table in another box.

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This way if I want to go to a con, I can just grab a couple boxes and go. If I want to go to a con where I've got a table, everything I need is in just a couple more boxes, all of which fit in a couple shelves (more or less) in one bookcase.

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For a local con where I have a table, like Clockwork Alchemy, I go all out, so I need a couple more boxes of props, a display stand, and some tablecloths and an antique easel on loan from my wife. But the results, I think, are impressive.

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At least, thanks to my helpful assistants (thanks!) ...

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… it helped me sell a lot of books, and hopefully, make a lot of new fans.

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Time to order more FROST MOON …

-the Centaur

Clockwork Alchemy in Transit

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No time to blog this proper - things are moving too fast. But here's a flyover of Clockwork Alchemy in pictures.

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There's an awesome dealer's room … with droolworthy clothes (not my size, or it would be mine):

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There's an awesome art show, with epic props and artwork:

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And I do mean epic:

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There are amazing costumes of all kinds ...

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... with bleedover from Fanime and Baycon:

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There's an awesome Author's Salon organized by the redoubtable volcano lady, T.E. MacArthur …

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... and featuring alternate historian Harry Turtledove, Madeline Holly-Rosing of the Boston Metaphysical Society, Kaja & Phil Foglio of Girl Genius ...

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... and me!

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Many people at Thinking Ink Press helped out, either getting materials together prior to the con or helping out at the table ...

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… and we managed to make many fans happy by bringing them LIQUID FIRE!

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… and much more! For the very first time … someone bought the first Skindancer trilogy as a bundle!

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Let's end on that happy note, and I'll have more tales of the con soon! One more day to go...

-the Centaur

Jeremiah Willstone and the Sorting of the Secret Post

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If you love steampunk, flash fiction, or cool things printed on paper, come by Clockwork Alchemy this weekend. I'm pleased to announce that Thinking Ink Press is printing two pieces of ephemera for the con - the flash fiction Instant Book "Jagged Fragments" and the short story Snapbook "Jeremiah Willstone and the Sorting of the Secret Post."

I had hoped we'd have JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE ready for Clockwork Alchemy, but Debra, my editor at Bell Bridge Books, thought we should focus on getting Dakota Frost #3, LIQUID FIRE, out first - and she was right. That's out right now, in fact, just in time for the con - I got the books early this week.

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But Betsy Miller of Thinking Ink Press suggested that I put something together for the con, thinking of three pieces I already had - the flash fiction pieces "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms" and "If Looks Could Kill" and the essay "The Rules Disease". Not to be daunted by taking on too much, I decided I wanted a piece teasing THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE.

So I wrote a brand new short story just for the occasion, "The Sorting of the Secret Post".

Hand-printed copies of these books will be available at the con. We aren't sure what we'll do with these in the future - the beauty of instant books (books printed on a single sheet of paper) and snap books (chapbooks printed on conventional printers) is that they can be printed on demand for an event. We call them "ephemera" and they enable us to experiment with the printed word.

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Here you see Keiko O'Leary of TIP folding instant books (and Liza Olmsted of TIP scowling at a tax form). The editions we've produced this time just came together in time for the con. You can't even have the first ones - Nathan Vargas of TIP bought the very first copies of both books, one-of-a-kinds that will never come around again.

"The Sorting of the Secret Post" in particular is a direct prequel to THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, but it isn't clear whether we'll reprint it once the book from Bell Bridge is out (though I hope we will, we haven't decided). So come on down and get your copies … because whatever they become in the future, they'll be something different.

-the Centaur

At Clockwork Alchemy this Memorial Day

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This Memorial Day weekend, I'll be at the Clockwork Alchemy conference in the Author's Salon. I'll have on hand the new steampunk anthology TWELVE HOURS LATER, plus of course the newly released third Dakota Frost, Skindancer book LIQUID FIRE, which, despite the presence of an airship, is firmly an urban fantasy novel.

If I'm not at my table, I will likely be appearing at:

  • The Science of Airships Saturday, May 23 from 2pm - 3pm in the San Juan Workshop Room
  • Steampunk Comics Saturday, May 23 from 6pm to 7pm in the Author's Salon.
  • Writing Steampunk: Sunday, May 24 from 2pm to 3 pm in the Carmel Fashion Room

In addition to TWELVE HOURS LATER and LIQUID FIRE … I may have something else at the table. Stay tuned.

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-the Centaur