Asimov’s Science Fiction has just published my story, “Last Thursday.” Honestly, I love this story. It was fun and cathartic to write. I’m also with great company in the volume. From a novella by Michèle Laframboise to poetry by Bruce Boston, the writers in this issue are stellar (pun intended). So pick up your copy today by clicking here ..read more

Homicide Detective Ned Zaleski resents the chief’s decision to enlist Sherlock Holmes’ help in Zaleski’s latest murder investigation. Zaleski fails to see how Holmes, newly transported to the 1990s from his own time by the Santa Cruz Time Wizards, can shed any light on a modern-day serial killer. But Zaleski soon learns Holmes’ earned his reputation for insight honestly. And that insight might lead Zaleski down a path he cannot bear to go. First published in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, an anthology authorized by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate, “Second Fiddle” offers an intricate series of unexp ..read more

And it came early in my career…as these things do. Acclaim often happens to a new voice because it so stuns the readers that everyone pays attention. They did so with Gallery of His Dreams, which was a cover story for Asimov’s (my first there), and a limited edition and a many-times reprint. It got nominated for every award in the sf field that existed and that it was eligible for at the time. And, weirdly for me (then and now), almost everyone in the field had read the story, whether they liked it or not. That’s not what I remember the most about it, though. I remember writing it in my crappy ..read more

…no. Not that one, the one we all remember. This one happened about 100 years ago, in the financial district…in the tallest building at the time. I have no idea how I came across this little tidbit, but of course, it attracted my writerly brain, and of course, I had to write about it. September at Wall and Broad is a time travel story that features the explosion, yes, but also focuses on a problem in the time travel of the future. What happens when a time agent does not return? Do you send more agents after that person to figure out what happened, particularly if nothing shows up in the timeli ..read more

We started a Kickstarter on Tuesday of six of my standalone science fiction novellas. As I mentioned in the first post here on the site, I was a bit stunned to realize how long it had been since we did any discoverability work on any of these novellas. That includes letting you all know what the novellas are about. I promised I would write about them here, one per day. Since there are only six days left in this Kickstarter, I realized this afternoon that I’d better get these posts underway. We’re going to start with a personal favorite of mine: The Tower. I’m a history nut and a crime fiction ..read more

I learned something a bit startling late last year. I was putting together the reading list for my in-person science fiction mystery class, and I realized that most of the books I wanted my students to read were out of print—and there was no electronic edition. Most of them were anthologies that came out in the mid-2000s (or earlier) and no one apparently saw or understood the reprint possibilities. One—my very favorite—was published by a publishing house that is now gone. The editor has retired, and there were only a few thousand copies in the first place. On the resale market, I could find&n ..read more

…on the Hearts Collide Kickstarter. We hit three stretch goals so far, including a special stretch goal that includes an online writing workshop. Thank you, backers!!!! We have a chance of hitting one more stretch goal, which would include one more writing workshop, if we get to 10K before the Kickstarter ends. There’s a slim chance of that, but there’s a chance! Hearts Collide is a collection of five books with 100 stories, half from me and half from Dean Wesley Smith, all with romantic topics and themes. There’s romantic suspense here and romance and science fiction and fantasy…pretty much y ..read more

I don’t normally post in the middle of my night, but I’m trying to get in coverage of all five of the books in the Hearts Collide Kickstarter in a 24-hour period. I had planned to do this over a week, but a writing workshop (and sheer exhaustion afterwards) got in the way. So, I have to do this at the last minute. I started in my morning with 57 hours left in the Kickstarter, and then did two more posts, featuring volume 2 and volume 3. You can go back and read those posts, and maybe they’ll inspire you to check out the Kickstarter. Or maybe, Volume 4, with its lovely cover, will inspire you t ..read more

July was strange. I had a lot of dental and other medical appointments which ate up a lot of time. Some of the stuff that happened forced me to rest afterwards or deal with migraines. I’ve had migraines my whole life, so I can judge how “bad” they are. These were bad enough that I couldn’t really think, but I could read. So the last two weeks of the month, I got more reading in than usual—which was an upside! You gotta find them in a month filled with doctors and pharmacists and vets and dentists. Oh, the other upside is that these people exist and are competent, which is really nice after som ..read more

A lot of reading in June, but mostly for various editing projects. One of them, the Holiday Spectacular, will have a Kickstarter that goes live in October. Before that, though, you can sample our Christmas in July promotion of the Spectacular with the compilation of last year’s stories. What I did read outside of that project I liked, but not enough to recommend. I read a novel by a favorite mystery writer that had no tension in it at all. And another novel I had forgotten about until I examined my reading log. I’d only read it a few weeks ago, and it was already out of my head. That doesn’t h ..read more