sci-fi

2020 Vision

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Hello everyone!

It’s a new month, a new year, and a new decade. I have several projects in the works for writing, and I’m really excited to share them with you!

The first thing is that my novella Yaliana is finally going to be published. It was originally going to be published with Less Than Three Press. When they shut down, JMS Books agreed to publish Yaliana and take on the editing job as well as creating it a new cover. So without further ado, I’d like to unveil the new cover for Yaliana and also announce that the official release date is January 18, 2020. This is my first new publication in years, which I am glad to say is finally here.

yaliana

I also have some news on the development of my other stories.

Weekend Girl is shaping up to be about 60 000 words long. I am currently about 2/3 of the way finished writing this novel. After I finish it, the novel will go out for beta reading. I’m hoping to wrap it up before the beginning of April.

Secondly, Far Patrol, my epic fantasy with dragons is out for beta already. I’d like to finish editing it and get it out for submission somewhere soon. Also, I am halfway done writing the second novel in the trilogy.

Lastly, I have a novella of about 25 000 words that I want to finish writing. It’s currently at 5000 words, but it will be a nice addition to my current works.

Those are my current projects. I hope to keep everyone apprised of how all those projects are shaping up. Apart from the ones I’ve already started writing, I have several stories planned for the future, so hopefully my writing hiatus is officially over.

Have a great year everyone!

Hiatus over?

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Hello all!

It’s good to be back!

I’m sorry for being gone for so long. I was mostly working on my education, so I hope you will forgive me. I am graduating from UNBC with an MA in English on May 31st!

Anyway, that’s exciting for me. But what’s exciting for you guys is that I am back to work on creative writing stuff! I am currently finishing up dev edits on Yaliana that I was supposed to finish up over a year ago. Now that it’s back on track, I will probably be able to give you an update on publication dates soon!

Not only that, check this out!

Read and Write with Pride Turns 5

I’m doing a reading event in Edmonton again! It’s the annual Read and Write with Pride happening with some great LGBTQ writers in attendence. I’m excited about that, but I still don’t know what I’m going to be reading! I’ll let everyone know closer to the date.

There are so many things I’m working on right now, but I will have time this summer to work on creative writing, and hopefully taking a gap year between MA and PhD will give me lots of time to write.

I’ll tell you more about projects as they develop!

For now, glad to see you all!

LGBT WIP

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Hey everyone, long time no see!

I’m just writing in to tell you about the #LGBTWIP tag going on via Twitter this month. A lot of LGBTQ authors are responding to this tweet to talk about their latest WIP. I guess I’m band-wagoning onto the idea, because here I am.

So one of my WIP is about agender plant-aliens who are meeting humans in order to do a trade deal. The story goes that they are trying to make a trade, with a secondary goal of making an alliance, but then a radical xenophobic group gets involved and tries to mess up the tentative agreement. My MC is a scientist who does a lot of her own experiments on herself. She is a biotech engineer who is working on making their species more hardy in order to survive longer, healthier lives. Because of her work, she is added to a diplomatic team that includes her “mother,” the main diplomat and negotiator. 

The premise came from a very famous Tumblr post about how aliens might see humans as the scariest ones in the universe and not the other way around. My plant-aliens are very peaceful people who worship nature and the balance of life. Meeting war-like and aggressive humans is a bit of a culture-shock for them.

Anyway, a lot of the plot is yet undecided, and there’s a lot of work to be done on it. 

If any of you are wondering about my Across Borders rewrite, I haven’t exactly worked on it in a while, mostly because of grad school. 

I’m also working on a free read on Wattpad called Text Me. Feel free to check that one out, since it’s free. Notice I’m using the word “free” a lot? Yeah, it’s free. It’s not finished yet, but I’ve been updating it fairly regularly.

Anyway, hopefully I will finish my thesis fairly soonish and I will be able to write again. 

I keep saying that, but “soon” is a relative term.

Anyway, drop into the comments if you have anything to chat about!

Ttyl

Dev edits

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Hello everyone,

My dev edits are currently driving me up the wall. Dev edits, or developmental edits, are supposed to help you with the structural aspects of the story you are trying to tell. My story, Yaliana, is a sci-fi lesbian romance. I love this story, but right now, it’s making me crazy.

First of all, I have an issue of nomenclature. I am talking about a different planet with different animals and plants. They are not really named, and my editor tells me that I need to come up with a system of naming these things. The main problem is that these characters have no frame of reference for these animals and plants. My characters have never lived on earth, and most of these animals are dangerous, so my characters’ main concern is not calling them by a name, but rather, staying alive.

Secondly, I have a character who I created who contradicts himself with his actions and words, and this was not done on purpose. I have to rewrite dialogue and different scenes in order to make him more consistent.

Thirdly, I have two stubborn characters who need to either show or reflect on their feelings for one another more openly. Right now, most of the story is focused on the action, whereas romance readers are concerned with the relationship. I need to get them to talk more to each other and more to themselves about their developing love story.

Those are my three problems, and as you can see, they are rather extensive and systemic problems. I’m pretty sure that I can fix them, but it requires a lot of time and energy. Dev edits are really important for worldbuilding, especially in sci-fi and fantasy worlds. I hope to ensure that my novella makes sense by the time I finish.

Winter is coming…

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Hello everyone,

So I’m updating my blog even though I have accomplished pretty much nothing writing-wise. I’ve finished two chapters of my thesis for my English MA, but I haven’t finished editing Yaliana even though it’s been since August that I was supposed to have finished them. 

I have a new Tumblr blog? I just created it after sadly deleting my fandom blog. If you want to go follow me on Tumblr, you can find me at alex-powell-author. 

I’m working on trying to finish the Yaliana edits today and tomorrow. Sorry to my Less Than Three Press people who are working on edits and wanted them back ages ago. I hope I can finish them soon.

As for my depression, it’s had its ups and downs. I was basically useless the entire summer because of fatigue, but hopefully I can finish some projects.

I hope everyone is getting their own projects done! Good luck!

End of Summer update

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Hello all! I’ve been MIA for a bit, and I want to explain a bit.

I’ve been having a hard time with chronic exhaustion, which as of yet does not have an explained cause. I’ve been to the doctor, had numerous blood tests and even undergone a test for sleep apnea. The doctor is still trying to diagnose me with something so that we can treat my tiredness. Just so you all have an idea of how this is affecting me, I haven’t been able to concentrate or focus on anything for any length of time. I’ve been missing work, haven’t been able to do any of my Masters coursework and haven’t done any writing or editing since late July. It’s been very stressful and frustrating for me. I’ve been slowly trying to do some work again, and I hope by September I’ll at least have a doctor’s diagnosis for my problem.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to more happy news.

So, a little while ago I put out a call on Twitter for artists to do an art exchange with me – my writing in exchange for art. To my surprise, someone actually answered me!

Reiko Meyer was interested in doing an art exchange with me, and nothing could make me happier, because I’m actually terrible at art. There’s nothing I want more than to have amazing fanart of my characters, but my artwork is laughable. So, in the hopes of finally having fanart, I made a call, and Reiko answered.

Ta-da! This is Yaliana. Reiko did an amazing job. I love it an incredible amount, and I hope to do many more art exchanges with her in the future!

Yaliana

This is also a call for any other artists out there who would like to do an art exchange. I’m a writer who is willing to write from pretty much any prompt in exchange for artwork.

If that’s something you are interested in, email me at aa.powell.author@gmail.com

And lastly, I have the final cover art for Yaliana! I’m really excited about it as well, because as usual, LT3 Press has outdone themselves with their cover art.

Here it is!

Yaliana final

So I’m still doing my best to get the editing for Yaliana finished so that we can get a release date for it. I’m getting it done slowly, but it’s been difficult, as outlined by my tiredness issues above.

I hope that next time I talk to you, I’ll be able to tell you that I’m back on track!

Release date for ATKM

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Good news everyone!

I have a release date for All the King’s Men! It’s July 27th, which I think is a great time for a book to be released, during the height of summer. I’m obviously really excited to have something to look forward to in the future.

My cover art for ATKM is coming next month, so I can share that with everyone soon. I’m always really happy with cover art from Less Than Three Press. LT3 has some pretty amazing artists.

In other news, I’m still slowly working on some other projects while also getting the hang of the bookstore business. If you hadn’t already heard, I now own a bookstore, and I have a new kitten who will be my bookstore kitty. He’s already gotten in a lot of trouble knocking over stacks of books and climbing tokitten1 the top of racks. (I’m also shamelessly going to include many kitten pictures in this post.)

I have one mini project in the works, which is the anthology for Gay Romance Northwest. Their call for this anthology is called Magic and Mayhem which is a charity anthology to help GRNW with their various programming and book donations. The call is for either stories with a pairing of mage/cyborg or soldier/tattoo artist. For those of you who’ve attended the conference in the past, this is from the fun Character Type Love Match game that readers played during the last two years.

kitten2

I’m going with mage/cyborg, mostly because I’m a fantasy and sci-fi writer generally. I’m just about 8000 words into it, and it probably won’t be more than 10k words long. That’s due March 31st, so I will be working on that until the end of the month.

My tentatively titled “Far Patrol” ace aro dragon novel is still out on beta. I expect that to take a little while because the novel is almost 60k words long. It’s a pretty hefty one for me, my longest novel to date. The sequel to that is on the back burner while I work on the Magic and Mayhem story.

 

kitten3As usual, I have plot bunnies running amok, and there’s all sorts of story ideas going every which way. But I’m glad to be back to churning out the writing.

 

Rainbow Awards Runner Up

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I forgot to mention, because I happened to be in France while the Rainbow Awards were announced and was generally drunk on Normandy pear cider and Calvados: Rangers Over Regulus was fifth runner up for the Gay Futuristic/Sci-fi category!

Runner-UpMDAs you can imagine, I was very pleased for myself when I discovered this, right before I was on a plane for 10 and a half hours on my return to Canada. I know, it’s been a month, but you must forgive me for forgetting. I had to go through customs twice on my way back: once in the States, and a second time in Canada. And then I had to pack up and move house once I got back. And then it was Christmas.

Now that it’s the New Year, I can remind everyone in case they forgot, like me.

The other runners up in the Sci-fi/Futuristic category were:

2. Light by Nathan Burgoine

3. Piper by Leona Carver

4. Strain by Amelia C. Gormley

And the winner was Rarely Pure & Never Simple by Angel Martinez.

Rainbow Awards

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Hello All!

I just found out that my novel Rangers Over Regulus is a finalist in the Rainbow Awards in the Gay Sci-fi/Futuristic category!

regulus

It is a real honour to have even been nominated in the first place, and I can hardly believe that my novel has moved on to the finals.

Of course, my novel is definitely up against some tough competition. Good luck to us all!

And just so you all know, I’m not the only finalist from Less Than Three Press. I’m sure we’re all proud to represent our publisher in a range of different categories.

We also have:

The Only Way by Jamie Sullivan, finalist for the Lesbian Fantasy Romance category

Alpha Trine by Lexi Ander, finalist for the Bisexual General Fiction category

Goblins by Melanie Tushmore

Of Last Resort by Megan Derr

The Calm Before by Neena Jaydon

all finalists for the Gay Fantasy Romance category

The Memory of Blood and Lotuses by E.E. Ottoman, finalist for the Gay Paranormal Romance category

Camelia by Caitlin Ricci and Cari Z., finalist for the Lesbian Contemporary Romance category

and

The Fall Guide by Talya Andor, finalist for the Gay Contemporary Romance category.

I also noted a few authors that I met at the Gay Romance Northwest meet-up also had novels that were in the finals.

Congratulations all around! We’ll have to wait until December to find out the winners, and until then, happy writing everyone!