Tag: literature

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Pals of the Pen Variety

I got myself some pen pals!  So far I’ve written two letters (hand written) on the topics of the destruction of mankind, and the colonization of space.  I’m expecting the first letters from two others, for a total of four pen pals!  I’m excited.

Well, the hunt for an agent is… happening.  I want to say going well, in that I’ve found several agents who I feel would really dig my book, AND who I’d like to work with.  So yes, in that regard, it’s going well.  As ever, the rejection letters are trickling in.  I had my fastest one ever today; 24 minutes!  It seems fast, but then, if it’s not right for someone, I’d rather know sooner rather than later.  🙂

I’ve been trying to get to know the agents I’m submitting to a little more before I contact them.  For some, it’s a bit hard if they don’t have a big internet presence.  They best ones so far have been agents with blogs, and that have done interviews.  My favourite has been Eddie Schneider, who did this fantasic AMA on Reddit a while ago.  That was really great to read, not just to get to know more about him as an agent!

Also happening on Reddit right now, is an AMA by author Michael J. Sullivan.  I have great respect for him; everywhere he shows up in r/writing he imparts so much wisdom, so many useful tidbits.  He answered a lengthy question of mine today! Thanks Michael.

On the non-writing front, The Walking Dead.  Is.  Fantastic.  I haven’t cried that hard during a TV show in quite a while; this last episode, “Killer Within” had me bawling my eyes out.  MAN.  What excellent acting.

I participated in the Reddit Halloween exchange.  My gifter sent me this:

Fun!  I sent my match some interesting candy, including White Rabbits, a Double Decker bar, and a few other yummies.  Oh, and a big fake spider.  >:)

DELICIOUS.

This years Reddit Secret Santa is live!  Sure to be a record breaker.

…You know what else is delicious?  Pizza.  I’m making a meat lovers tonight, from scratch.  Using sausage I made myself.  I’m excited.  And then tomorrow, a Hawaiian.  Then the next day, Veggie Mediterranean.  Gosh, pizza is awesome.

Pics to follow.  🙂

Cheers guys.  Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Weekly Top Lists and Polls!

Hey guys.  Sorry I’ve been bad about updating; it just feels like I can only post “I’m working on it” so many times.  😉  But yeah, the manuscript is done.  I’m now waiting for my beta readers to get back to me, and their notes are trickling in.

I met with a high school book club on Monday, which garnered me 10 contacts in my target audience!  I’m extremely pleased but also nervous as butts.  Writing it is one thing, having other people read it is entirely another.  Good ol’ Alot of Doubts rearing his stupid ugly head again…

Onwards!  I have decided, to keep my posts regular, that I shall post a Top 5 list every week, with an accompanying poll for all you awesome readers to take part in.  I’m hoping this can get us all thinking and talking about our favourite whatevers!

Why top 5?  Well, top 10 seems overdone, and much too easy.  I tried to just do top 3, but that was far too hard!  I ended up with runners up, which defeats the purpose.  So, I have settled on a top 5.  Each choice pertains to my ‘elemental’ theme, with each selection relating to the ‘element’ I pair it with, if only esoterically, and often without explanation  Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and, sort of the runner-up category, Heart.

I was going to call it the EFWWH List, but that felt like tripping at the finish line.  So I’m going to go with “The Captain’s Five”.  Aside from the obvious Captain Planet reference, it sounds cooler, and more sci-fi.

So I give you, without much further ado, the first “The Captain’s Five” List and Poll!

The Captain’s Five:

Top Sci-Fi Novels

“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card

This is a quintessential Sci-Fi read.  Compelling and extremely well written, it has characters that get under your skin, that get inside your head.  The story follows a boy bred for Battle School who must take charge and lead the other children as they prepare for another war with the alien “buggers”.  The whole series, and the shadow series from another character’s perspective, is at the top of the sci-fi food-group pyramid.

“The Hyperion Cantos” by Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion” and “The Fall of Hyperion” are just, absolutely, stunning.  Sci-fi at its best.  Set in the far future, the first book contains the stories of the pilgrims sent on the suicidal Shrike Pilgrimage to face a terrible being who contorts time and breathes death.  Beautiful and terrifying, it is full of wonder.
“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

It may have been the timing of me reading this one, namely in the formative grade 8 adventures into more ‘adult’ lit, but this one really struck home.  I think my English teacher was rather horrified when I championed some of the ideas in the book.  Eugenics to steer the future of the human race?  What’s not to love!  Oh, maybe not the way they taylor the classes, people bred to be stupid, you know, for slaves.  0_O
“Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus” by Orson Scott Card

I know I know, two OS Card’s on the list?  Well, he *is* my favourite author.  And the two I picked are knight and day different.  Pastwatch goes about the business of studying humanity by peering back through time, literally spying on people as they go about their lives, unaware they’re being watched by the future’s anthropologists.  But when the earth reaches the tipping point where we’ll be unable to survive on it, Pastwatch embarks on a mission to save it by sending people back in time, to strategic places, to try and correct the mistakes of our past.  Absolutely fantastic.  This is my most lent, and most bought-as-a-gift book.
“WWW” (“Wake”, “Watch”, and “Wonder”) by Robert J. Sawyer

I think Robert J. Sawyer is brilliant at seeing the world, and telling us how it’s going to be.  Or rather, how it’s going to be if just this one thing happened.  In WWW, that one thing is a sentient being coming into existence in cyberspace.  It’s gripping, and asks some truly important questions on what it means to be human, and what our reaction to such a scenario is likely to be.

So, thus concludes the first ever Captain’s Five!  I hope you enjoyed it.  Mayhaps I’ve left you with a new book or two to find and read?  🙂

Now: take the poll!  Let everyone know what *your* favourite sci-fi book is.  Results published along with next week’s “Captain’s Five”!

…Please ignore “Sample Question 2″…  Ain’t nobody got time for that.  >_<

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Novel R&D: Fun fun fun.


I’m really getting into the research and development of my latest novel.  Currently I’m trying to get myself up to speed with genetic engineering, at least to the level of understanding where I can write about it and not be all hand-wavy and pseudo-sciencey.

On the docket are the following TED Talks:

Paul Root Wolpe: It’s time to question bio-engineering

Jack Horner: Building a Dinosaur from a Chicken

And Gregory Stock: to Upgrade is Human

Also on the docket are any movies about genetic engineering and the societal consequences of designing life.  And general sci-fi set in the not-too-distant future.

  • Gattaca
  • Blade Runner (my ‘nemesis’ film: watched it four times, but never finished it!)

I’ve seen Splice, In Time, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes recently, and they’re good fodder for this project.  I know Jurassic Park off by heart, so that’s always in the background (Dr. Malcolm’s monologue chastising John Hammond’s reckless and yet awe inspiring stab at creating new life is cemented in my mind for all time).

It’s a difficult thing to try and conceive of how the world will look in the future; I’m gaining a greater appreciation for some of my favourite sci-fi authors who seem to effortlessly transplant me into their vision of the future.  For now I realize that, while it feels effortless to the reader, to the author, it is anything but.

Anything you’d care to recommend, I’d love to have more movies to watch that will get my gears turning!

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English, the great love, the great confusion

I cam across a funny little set of phrases which illustrate just how silly English can be.  Consider the following:

  • The bandage was wound around the wound.
  • The farm was used to produce produce.
  • The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.
  • We must polish the Polish furniture.
  • He could lead if he would get the lead out.
  • The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
  • Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
  • A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
  • When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
  • I did not object to the object.
  • The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
  • There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
  • They were too close to the door to close it.
  • The buck does certain things when does are present.

My gosh I love English.  …And I really feel for people trying to learn it as a second language.  Must be pretty confusing sometimes!

In writing news, I’m learning basic sign language (ASL) and learning all about heterochromia, preparing the characters in my latest book.  It’s good fun.  My curent goal is to have it written (though likely not nearly edited) by the end of September.  Three months.  Ambitious.  My last one took me four, and that was a breakneck pace.  …But I was also working full time then.

Onwards!

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The Ramifications of Creating a New Life Form and a Silly Video of a Cat

Yesterday, I went to a broadcast of a play.  Last year, I went to National Theatre’s production of “Frankenstein” and was delighted to see they were rebroadcasting it.  So I got tickets for me and my friends and we went to see Frankenstein, as directed by a the wonderful Danny Boyle.

I came at it from a whole nother angle; I recently started a new book, one that deals with genetic engineering and the many interesting quandaries that arrise because of our tendency to do things because we can.  I was much more in tune to Frankenstein’s monster this go around; I realized I had been approaching my story from a human-centric viewpoint.  Silly author…

So as I was getting into that groove, my brain did a funny thing.  It started replaying this video of a cat.  And it was funny.  And it almost made me laugh out loud at several, completely inappropriate points during the broadcast.

I managed to get back on track… it was a strange deviation.  Perhaps it was some failsafe, activated when not being attracted to Frankenstein’s monster is impossible.  Because Benedict Cumberbatch.

All that aside, it was a fantastic production.  Really visceral, really physical.  It was tremendous.

And then still, there’s this.  :/

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Good News, Everyone!

Yes, good news indeed!

I’ve received another acceptance for a short piece!

It’s an anthology of zombie flash fiction:

It’s going to be published by Hazardous Press.

I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s out.  Should be a riveting collection of all things zombie related.

My piece is called “Coping Mechanisms” and features a Projectionist named Rose, and some settings familiar to my fellow Vancouverites.

I’m actually getting royalties!  Ooooh, aaaaah!  I’m excited.  It will be out in print and ebook formats.

In the mean time, got to keep writing!  Sure feels good to get an acceptance; really bolsters my spirits.

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for reading, following, commenting, and linking: your support is really helping me get my career off the ground.  I hope to string you along on a lifetime of exciting work!

Heidi out.

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Cowboys and Werewolves

Well, my day is off to a rousing start.

Q: When is a kitty’s fur the softest?

A: Apparently at 4am.

Gosh, Echo, you’re so darn cute… Can’t blame her for waking me though, she was sick and was out of food.  :/

So!  Today: Cowboys and Werewolves.

I’m working on a piece for Mystichawker Press, a fledgling listing.  They know what they want.

I decided to to a google image search of “Cowboys and Werewolves” for inspiration, and, well…

So I’ll just try to forget I did that, and stick with my original plan: write the rootin’est tootin’est, gunslingingest, cross genrefest I’ve ever penned.

So far we’ve got space cowboys sent to a recently colonized planet to hunt… alien werewolves.

If you’re thinking this

meets this

but with -spoiler alert- multiple moons…

…you’re basically bang on the money.

I’m using characters I’ve written a bunch, trying them on in some sci-fi roles again.  I love switching up genres and settings for characters I’ve written and want to write again.

I’m having great fun with it.  Hopefully their editors will as well.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Chopin’s Blooddrop Sonata- and the super prolific author who is editing it

Working on a piece for a horror anthology featuring classical music.  I hope something from the early Romantic period counts, because Chopin’s Raindrop Sonata has always been mind fodder for terrors for me.  It’s such a journey; one of my favourite pieces I studied while taking piano.

Chopin doesn’t look like a scary guy, right?  *Swoon*

Working out the logistics of a werewolf who becomes a poltergeist is interesting; do they change into an etherial werewolf on the full moon?  (Yes.)  Can someone be bitten and infected by such a werewolf?  (Yes.)  Fun stuff.  So far the musical aspect of my story is the most creepy; my protagonist wakes up playing the piano, when she’s never played before.

(Insert scary ghost noises here!)

So, DF Lewis, I hope you dig Chopin, because he can be one scary, scary dude.

Whoa whoa whooooooaaaaaa- what do you mean you had 1,500 short stories published while I was slacking off aging from 1 to 15!?  Holy smokes, this guy is a machine.  What an inspiration!

He must know the craft pretty well; hopefully he digs my classical-pianist/werewolf/poltergeist silliness.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Word Clouds: Silly and Enlightening

I enjoy playing with word clouds.

I made one for a recent short story, “The Darker Paths”:

Word clouds are fun.

But did I really use “Max” and “Brian” *that* much?  Gosh.  Something to keep in mind when I’m crafting.

My next project, “Blood Drop Sonata”, is for a horror anthology featuring classical music.  I’m having good fun with it.  I’m starting to mesh monsters with wild abandon; werewolf poltergeists are a thing, right?  Well, now they are.

And just so I’m clear,