Sin Is Beautiful

The blog of Malcolm F. Cross
  • Dog Country
  • War Dog and Marginalized Populations
  • Pavlov’s House
  • Dangerous Jade
  • Jane, Jill and Jasie
  • Orbital Decay
  • Heat #8
  • Heat #6
  • New Fables 2010
  • The Fortune Teller’s Poem
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Nominate me for an award? (Ursas, not Hugos)

by foozzzball on January 25, 2015 at 8:53 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

So, yes. Time to shamelessly shill myself and ask all of you to do things for me.

It’s awards nomination time, and though I’d absolutely love a Hugo, I don’t know that I quite run in that crowd (and it’s quite a big crowd). But I would like to call your attention to the Furry Fandom’s equivalent, the Ursa Major Awards. I was honored with a win for Dangerous Jade a few years ago, and I’d really like to see if a more recent work — my short story, Pavlov’s House — has what it takes.

Pavlov’s House, if you haven’t met it, is set in the same universe as Dangerous Jade, but deals with those war dogs of mine, last seen starting a war in the story collection War Dog & Marginalized Populations. In it you meet Sokolai, one of Eschowitz and Scheuen’s brothers, who is having a hard time living with what happened during the Tajik revolution. It was published April last year by Strange Horizons, which was kind of a huge thing on a personal level. If you haven’t read it, you can take a look here, or listen to the podcast version here.

The Ursa Majors are, of course, the Furry Fandom’s home-grown awards, covering everything from games to books to comics. They work on a system where public nominations (which you, yes, YOU can contribute to) are followed a couple of months later by a public vote (ditto).

If you liked Pavlov’s House, please do consider nominating it over here, and otherwise do check out some of the great stuff that’s been recommended over the course of last year — there are always a couple of gems in there.

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Happy Holidays, wrapping up the year, and things of that ilk.

by foozzzball on December 26, 2014 at 9:02 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

So. Happy holidays, and I hope the year’s been absolutely wonderful to you and yours!

My year’s been ups and downs, like any good year should be. Just lately it’s been spent running myself a little ragged, rewriting things and catching up after a double-dip spell of the flu which has left me with one of those coughs that take awhile to shake off.

Next year’s going to be interesting, and you should look out for Extinction Biome, my next work with Abaddon Books, sometime around spring-ish. (It has gone under multiple names recently — finding titles is hard work!) This past year? This past year’s probably been the one in which I’ve connected with the idea of writing-as-my-industry most strongly.

It saw the publication of my first short story sale to a pro market (as defined by SFWA), Pavlov’s House — which y’all should read. It saw the publication of my novella Orbital Decay with Abaddon Books, seeing print as part of Journal of the Plague Year, which people seem to be liking a whole lot. I also finished off my first actual complete novel length work, (Dog Country, mostly about Edane who appears briefly at the end of Pavlov’s House) which I’m still shopping around for agents before I make any choices on what to do with it.

I attended more conventions than I thought possible, passing through Confuzzled on a day ticket, and making it through the two week marathon of LonCon 3 and Eurofurence almost back to back. Got to meet lots of people, had some enlightening chats with agents, saw a ton of fursuiters, and started (very tentatively) on a manifesto of why I think furry fiction is legitimately its own genre with its own distinct aesthetics and issues it approaches, rather than just being ‘SF/F with animal people tacked on’.

In many ways I’m doing quite well, even if the holiday season has left me behind on everything work-wise. This year I hit a million words written since I started writing on a properly serious basis in 2009, I’ve managed to sell more things and organize more contracts and paying work than ever before, and, in general, the holiday slow-down’s helping me realize that even if I do feel harried by work right now, I’ve managed to achieve a lot of new things this year.

So, y’know. There’s silver linings everywhere, especially if you take the time to find and appreciate them. Hope you find some silver linings of your own, and take the time to enjoy them during this year’s Christmas-to-New-Years quietude!

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Getting back into the grind and playing games.

by foozzzball on October 4, 2014 at 8:13 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

Okay, so. After the whirlwind of August, my September was about settling down and getting back into the grind to work. Unfortunately this coincided with a decision to go over my outlines for the next work-for-hire, which briefly turned into an obsessive hunt for problems and trying to fix them which ballooned the entire preliminary work/outline process to eat up most of the month. Feature creep, am I right?

Feature creep aside, the gears are now turning, prose is now falling from my keyboard, and the trick is to start clinging rigidly to my schedule once more. No real work news beyond that, though…

Well, okay. There’s a little other work news. My Amazon self-pub sales have completely and utterly flatlined.

The last time anyone bought one of my books was late August. Personally? I think this is a sign that I haven’t really published anything self-pubbable in more than a year, and have been putting zero effort into that whole side of things. What this year has really been about, in terms of material presented, is Orbital Decay/Journal of the Plague year, from Abaddon, and my short piece — Pavlov’s House — which went up on Strange Horizons. That is literally all there’s been to show, despite the fact that I finished writing Dog Country. 2013? 2013 was not a great year for me, writing-wise. This all really highlights the weird lag we see as writers. We won’t know the real consequences of what we work on today until months or years have gone past.

See. My amazon sales flatlining? This is against a background of one of the most productive years I’ve had since I started writing, finishing off my first novel, attending a Worldcon where I had a great time meeting friends, editors/support staff I’ve worked with, being contracted to write another novel (in five parts — more on that later) and generally having a great time. There are some foundational things going on with my career that are absolutely great.

But my self-pub sales are flat.

And obviously that doesn’t feel good.

Why are my sales flat? Because in 2013 I spent about half of my time spinning my wheels. I produced two works that were any good — Orbital Decay and Pavlov’s House — and the rest of the time on abortive half-projects, feeling bad, rehashing older works, and generally not getting anything done. It was a lousy year for so many reasons, as was 2012 really, but the knock-on effect has only really started coming home to roost now. The benefits of this year’s productivity? Don’t expect to see any of it until 2015, if not 2016.

I need to put together some more material for self-pub again sometime soon, is the real conclusion to draw from all that.

In other news, in an effort to keep my schedules schedule-ey I’ve signed up for a competitive Mechwarrior Online team. Practice is four nights a week. I may well write more about my experiences here, but, for now, in the early days, let me just say that I am being reintroduced to the fact that playing games competitively is exceptionally technical. For a game about giant robots stomping around, the approach is almost unforgivably scientific with discussions on approach angles, in-game systems like ECM and sensor drone UAVs, and the relative merits of clusters of missiles versus lasers. Also? All my reflexes are wrong and I need new reflexes.

I don’t think I can buy those on Amazon, though.

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Post-con shenanigans, titles, and outlines.

by foozzzball on September 6, 2014 at 8:58 pm
Posted In: News and Updates, Personal

Slow off the mark this month!

So. I attended both LonCon 3 (Worldcon) and Eurofurence 20 last month, and, man. I did not expect things to be so tiring. I actually managed to give myself a fairly heinous foot blister by the end of Eurofurence, so, I’ve been taking the excuse to be fairly lazy the past couple of weeks.

LonCon 3 was a blast, for so many reasons, especially getting to meet the crew over at Abaddon Books, as well as meeting various people in my professional capacity as writer, which was new, intimidating, and kind of exhilarating. I’m just sad I didn’t have more material to put out there and try to sell agents on, but, I think I’m doing okay with Dog Country. It may or may not sell, but putting it through the motions is certainly teaching me more about this whole publishing, selling a novel, finding an agent game. (And, y’know. Some people are making guardedly positive noises, which is incredibly encouraging for the long term.) Also spent most of it hanging out with my friends Tim and Mark, but also got to meet so many others. Wonderful meeting everybody, although there are too many for me to be able to adequately list right now.

Eurofurence 20 was a little more relaxed, in some ways, though as it was a hotel con in Germany, far from home, and I’m a bit of an introvert, it was also a smidge more draining than I expected. Hanging out with furries is always fun, mind, and having fursuiters around makes for some of the most pleasing people-watching imaginable. Having wound up in some late night talks, I will just say that I vaguely have it in mind to try my hand at penning a manifesto for ‘furry fandom’ literature, but I’m still mulling over the details. In brief, though? A lot of those in the furry fandom experience a fairly typical cycle of alienation, the development of a chosen/constructed identity (as opposed to the one you’re born with/society assigns to you), the discovery of some manner of acceptance, and not infrequently practicing some vocation as part of the chosen/constructed society of the fandom at large. (Writing, art, fursuiting, singing, running auctions, the works.) Now, while this is not exclusive to the furry fandom — I’m sure it happens in a lot of subcultures/fandom groups? — I do think the furry fandom has the potential to put a unique spin on it. And I do see some of the edges of this cycle of alienation/new identity/acceptance in some of the fandom’s more popular works, regardless of other subject matter, so I suppose what I’m really trying to do is ferret out the unspoken rules and write them down…

Also, Germany — Berlin in specific — was kind of eye opening. My friend and unwitting tour-guide, Sarah, showed me all these interesting leftist/alt-culture/indie/punk/counterculture bits of Berlin, and I have to say I’ve never been hit harder with how different a culture that looks the same on the surface — predominantly white, western, etc — can actually be on the ground. Also I stole her food, because Berlin has some tasty restaurants tucked away, when their eating establishments aren’t infested with wasps. (Long story.)

I happened to accost a record number of people with possible titles for my current WIP over both conventions, and one has finally been locked down for my next project with Abaddon — a project which is moving quite quickly, despite my being slightly behind where I wanted to be because I wound up revising my outline an extra two times. I will save the proper title for now, though if you’re eagle-eyed on my twitter feed you might’ve caught it. You will no doubt hear more about that, and the impending extinction of mankind thanks to strange and ancient ecologies, pretty damn soon.

Next thing on my plate is to finish expanding the next set of outlines from the revised set of outline-outlines which I had an outline for. I may be going stir crazy with my outlines, but I am, at least, prepared for whatever this next month throws my way.

 

└ Tags: Abaddon Books, Extinction Ecology, games
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The Mask Maker (Tiny Vignette)

by foozzzball on August 26, 2014 at 2:08 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

So on Friday, at Eurofurence 20, Kyell Gold held a brief panel on writing furry fiction.

The hyper-short version is that he gave a brief talk on how stories start out, with a focus on four major elements: A strong setting in mind; a character in possession of a strong defining element, like a vocation or (for furries) species; a specific desire; and a specific obstacle against acquiring that desire.

Then he handed out pens and paper and got the audience to try writing for forty-five minutes, with the idea that those who ended up with something they liked could stand up and read it out loud and get some brief commentary from him regarding those four elements.

Feeling desperately in need of practice reading stuff out loud in front of a crowd, I wound up writing the following. Apparently I did okay, which is cheering!

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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My Publications

  • Dog Country
  • War Dog and Marginalized Populations
  • Pavlov’s House
  • Dangerous Jade
  • Jane, Jill and Jasie
  • Orbital Decay
  • Heat #8
  • Heat #6
  • New Fables 2010
  • The Fortune Teller’s Poem

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