Tag Archives: scifi

Excerpt from My Novella “Ice”

iceIf you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

As I’m sure my regular readers know by now, my self-published novella “Ice” has been available for nearly two weeks now. Since I’m the publisher as well as the author, I’m doing all of the marketing for the book myself. While I’ve written summaries and discussed the book on one podcast so far, I still plan to promote the daylights out of it.

To that end, I’m putting up an excerpt of the story. It’s adventure and mutiny on the high seas, but these seas and the ships that sail upon them exist at the farthest reaches of human history where magic and science co-exist. The state of things on the merchant vessel “The Star of Jindo” have gone from bad to worse following a devastating storm that has crippled the ship and killed most of the crew. Captain Ki-Moon Yong has lost control of his command of his vessel for the first time in his career. Here’s what follows:

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“The Fallen Shall Rise” To Appear in the 224-Verse

Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy captured with a Celestron cpc1100 from the Israeli Desert by Deddy Dayag 9 July 2019

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I now have permission to discuss a small novella that has recently been accepted by Starry Eyed Press for their 224-Verse series.

First, a little background from their 224-Verse page:

What is the 224-Verse?

The 224-Verse is an interconnected fictional universe set within the sprawling starscape of Galaxy NGC 224 – Andromeda.

In terms of sheer size, Andromeda is 220,000 lightyears across and is home to a trillion stars and roughly four-trillion planets.

So the “verse” is a shared set of stories set in the Andromeda galaxy, potentially over hundreds of thousands of years of time and 220,000 lightyears of space. But that’s not it.

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Still Good Award Winning SciFi in the World

hyperion

Cover art for Dan Simmons’ novel Hyperion.

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It’s been almost three years since I wrote Hugo Award Winning Novels I Have Read. I authored the blog post mainly in response to the idea that these awards have really changed over the years. At the time, I was reading for review N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season in an attempt to understand how I remembered Hugo award winning novels being so outstanding in “the old days” vs. how I perceived the more modern tomes.

If you click the first link, you’ll see a list of the winning and nominated novels I’d consumed in my youth, their awards issued between 1953 and 1988. I read most of them.

I was posting something similar in a Facebook group earlier today and started wondering if, by now, I’d read any more recent Hugo recipients. I have:

  • 1990 Hyperon by Dan Simmons (winner).
  • 1993 Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (nominated).
  • 2013 Redshirts by John Scalzi (winner).
  • 2021 Network Effect by Martha Wells (nominated).

I read and reviewed Hyperion mainly because it was a Hugo winner AND Simmons was being trashed on an online fanzine (which shall not be named) by modern SciFi fans because of his politics. I hear that after all these years, it’s going to become a movie. Simmons is still with us and I wish him success.

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Jeb’s Guests

houses

Photo Credit: One Big Photo

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Jeb Blackbird was walking next to the workhorse pulling the buffalo carcass laden wagon when he saw the stranger by his house. Only Sioux should be allowed on this land for 400 miles in every direction, but this man was obviously one of the hated colonizers. To his credit, the white haired (white skinned) colonizer was waiting respectfully some twenty feet from the front door of the big house. Although the Dakota plains in autumn got damn cold, and the intruder was only in a shirt and rough trousers, he didn’t seem to mind.

The sun was setting behind the three houses, the big house for his wife and three children, middle for meat curing, storage, and whatever else he could think of, and the small house for the sweat lodge. Jeb reached over to the horse (he never bothered to give it a name) and pulled his Winchester rifle from the long holster mounted on the bridle.

“Speak your piece.” He made his voice as gruff as he could, though when he sang, his wife Ella said he sounded like the sweetest spirits. He pointed the barrel at the ground. This man’s kind had been a terrible trouble before they’d been stopped. His closest neighbor, Stewart Bluefeather said he had friends among them, and that not all white people were cruel, but for Jeb, trust was hard earned.

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“Ice” by James Pyles is Now Available

ice
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Admittedly, I’ve tried to sell this story in various forms for quite some time without any luck. I even asked a friend for help, thinking maybe he could suggest the proper venue. However, it didn’t take.

So I thought of self-publishing it. Here it is: Ice by James Pyles. No anthologies, no indie publishers, this one is all mine.

Good thing, too. When I went over my submitted story, I found horrible errors I never saw before. I took weeks just reading and re-reading “Ice” until I finally got it to the point where I thought it was ready (I’ll write a separate blog post about my first experience with Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) by the by).

Here’s the synopsis I wrote for Amazon:

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Two of My Short Stories Published in “Meteor Fall: An Anthology of The Collective”

meteor
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The Collective has long kept secret the strange things that happen after a meteor shower. While the world Oohs and Aahs over the pretty streaks of light, field agents quietly gather up the people and objects changed by this cosmic phenomenon.

With a global event unlike anything the world has ever seen on the horizon, the Collective knows it’s only a matter of time before the world discovers what really happens when objects fall from the sky.

Can they continue to maintain their secrecy and protect humanity from the dangers of Meteor Fall?

This one is really interesting. I have two short stories published in Meteor Fall: An Anthology of The Collective.

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Review of “Tiamat’s Wrath,” Book Eight in The Expanse Series

tia
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Tiamat’s Wrath is the eighth novel in the Hugo Award winning “The Expanse” book series by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). This book ramps things up quite a bit from its predecessors. While we’ve seen Earth all but destroyed by asteroids, now an artificial neutron star found through one of the rings, throws out an intense gamma radiation burst, destroying everything in the “slow zone” including Medina Station, plus “disappearing” two of the rings.

Holden is being held prisoner on Laconia, Amos has plain disappeared, Bobbie Draper is leading the rebellion in the Sol system with Alex and other dissidents on the stolen Laconian warship Storm, and Naomi is hiding out on various space craft coordinating the over all fight as the underground’s de facto leader.

This novel is just as enjoyable as the others, and sees the return of Elvi and her husband Fayez (last seen in Cibola Burn). The Laconian dictator Duarte and his various henchmen come back, and Duarte’s fourteen-year-old daughter and heir apparent to the empire Teresa is introduced.

The sweep of the novel is no less than epic and the writing remains consistently strong (I admit to a bit of envy). I won’t try to encapsulate the entire drama, but there were a few points.

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“That Which Burns” Accepted Into “Winter of Wonder”

winter

Cover art for Winter of Wonder 2021

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My short story “That Which Burns” has been accepted into the Cloaked Press anthology “Winter of Wonder 2021.” Already several of my tales have been published in Cloaked Press anthologies Spring Into SciFi and Fall Into Fantasy. These anthologies come out annually (Spring and Fall) and this is the first time “Winter” has appeared. I’m so excited.

The publisher is still waiting for the last two author responses, but so far, the line up is:

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Review of “Persepolis Rising,” Book Seven in the Expanse Series

rising

Cover art for Persepolis Rising

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I’ve just now finished James S.A. Corey’s (really Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) book Persepolis Rising, the seventh novel in the Expanse series.

This time, the authors decided to jump over about three decades from the previous book, giving time for Earth to heal thanks in part to Martian terraforming technology (now that terraforming Mars has been abandoned).

The Transport Union, run by belters, is in full swing and Jim Holden and the Rocinante are still doing errands for them; an aging crew and an aging ship.

One of the ring colony worlds, Freehold, seems to be run by (probably) how the authors interpret far-right extremists, all conservative attitudes and guns. Drummer, the current President of the Union running things from a “void city” in Sol’s system, orders their gate to be blockaded as a result of them sending a ship through the ring and nearly causing a disaster.

That would mean cutting Freehold off from vital supplies, killing the colony and everyone on the planet. Holden comes up with a different solution (of course) and Drummer is going to rub his nose in it.

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