whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

Announcing Cyborg Stories

So, just a few comments on this – it’s more of an announcement than a real post, so I won’t take up too much of your time.

So this is about that university degree that I’ve signed up for this year. I’ve had a half a Masters degree hanging over my head for several years now, but ended up deciding to pick a different degree.

Anyway. That’s a story that I’ll save for the eventual autobiography, or a panel sometime. The main point is that for one of my courses, I have been required to create a website and some content for it, relevant to digital media somehow. I’m going to be focusing mine on how stories can be presented differently in digital spaces, and how digital spaces and traditional media spaces can be combined.

So, because I’m never one to waste good content, here is the link to the blog, called Cyborg Stories. I’ll be reposting the content here (with links of course, so that I can be sure I didn’t plagiarise myself), which will consist of at least one essay piece, possibly two, and a couple of recorded ‘podcasts’.

I’m not currently decided on what will happen to Cyborg Stories after the course. After all, I barely keep up with content for this blog as it is – I don’t trust myself to keep up with two. But I do have a couple ideas, and I think the blog will continue to see use. After all, I was blown away that I even managed to get the URL ‘Cyborg Stories’ – I’m not just throwing away that kind of lucky break.

In the meantime, enjoy the content. It won’t be too much of a departure from the normal stuff over here, just a little more … focused. You know, sticking to one theme. And an actual schedule.

Something like that.

Enjoy!

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

The King’s City Update

The King’s City appears to have finally gotten through its technical difficulties!

Thanks to all of you who came to the launch, it was great fun and it was lovely to interact with folks a bit!

As those of you who were at the launch may have been shown, I am putting together a list of people who are interested in a copy of the print book. As a thank-you for waiting and being so patient with me, I’m sending out copies of the print book with free bookmarks!

If you are interested, please drop a name and e-mail address in this form, where you can also let me know if you are interested in the book being signed or personalised, and I’ll be getting in touch with everyone to organise those ASAP!

And just so everyone knows, I won’t keep the names and e-mail addresses after people have received their books and bookmarks. I’m not keeping them for marketing, and I’m only sending e-mails about getting you a copy of The King’s City and a bookmark.

I’ll be collecting e-mails until this time next week, so if you want your copy and bookmark, make sure you sign up before 26 August 2020.

If you drop your e-mail in the form, I’ll get back to you about copies soon. If you want to just wait for the regular release, links are now imminent.

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

Final Twitch Update

Hey all!

Just a final reminder that there’s going to be a Twitch stream on this weekend!

The day is Sunday 16 August, the time is 1pm AEST. The channel is my Twitch channel. The occasion is the release of The King’s City!

I’ll be streaming for about 30-45 minutes, talking about the book, doing a quick reading, and then answering some questions both pre-organised by a friend who I bribed to MC for me and taken from the audience!

You can either bring questions on the day or send them to me in advance at @whimsy_metaphor on Twitter, or in the comments here.

E-books are already available, if you want to grab your copy before the stream, you can do so at Smashwords.

Print books are still coming shortly — we had some Unexpected Setbacks getting the cover uploaded to specifications. I’m really hoping to be able to either put those links up before the stream or announce them on stream. Thanks everyone for being so patient with me — as for me, I’ll just be chalking this one up to experience and telling the story at dinner parties and around the campfire to scare other writers.

But seriously though, it’s entirely my fault and I do thank you all for being patient like this. As soon as I can give a concrete date for when those will be available, I’ll let you know — I just don’t have a date I can point to yet with 100% certainty.

But hopefully I will see you all at the stream (if you’re not asleep, I understand, time zones are weird), and I look forward to interacting with you all!

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

The King’s City Release Update

Here it is! The day I promised has arrived!

There are some caveats, but The King’s City is now available for people to read!

If you want the book now or prefer e-books anyway, you can go to Smashwords and purchase the book right now!

However, if you like a shelf-able version, you may have to wait a few days. I’m doing the last of the form-wrangling at the moment. I’ll keep you updated, but I doubt that it’ll take much longer.

We are still going ahead on the 16th of August for the livestream at my Twitch channel. The stream starts at 1pm, and will go for about half an hour. I’ll be answering questions on the stream, so Tweet them to me before hand, or ask in the chat! Hope to see you there!

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

March 2020 Update

Third in a row! And hopefully I’ll start getting some other content up soon. Not too much of an update today – there’s not a lot that’s super exciting happening, but there are some things just to keep people updated on.

But before we get into that, I just want to say that I hope everyone is keeping safe and being safe – these are scary times and we have to look out for each other. If you haven’t had a thousand people telling you what to do by now, you’re probably not reading this because you aren’t on the Internet, so I won’t go over all the instructions again. I just want to say that the best tool we have is co-operation and community right now. Keep washing your hands. Be kind. Be safe.

I’ll put the soapbox away now.

And now on the updates note. Last week I put out those Patreon and Twitter polls, and some of you have spoken – the rest of you I am just going to go ahead and assume are fine with whatever happens next.

I asked what people wanted to see more of in the blog, and what people wanted to see, fiction-wise, in the story hiatus period. The results are as follows.

Answers on the blog posts topic were pretty split – some people wanted only general blog posts, but more people wanted a combination of all options. So I’ll be doing mostly just my general writing and writercraft posts, with some palate cleansers thrown in every so often about my writing process (rebooting Edit Pass Live, for example, and I’ve got some worldbuilding process posts planned, since that’s what I’m doing at the moment), and some personal, real-life stuff thrown in when something important happens.

The other part of the poll was what to do about the hiatus. Now that The Ferryman’s Apprentice is finished, I need a little time to work on the next project, due to some Technically Difficulties, by which I mean I’m both indecisive and picky when it comes to my writing projects. I have decided which project I want to work on, but unfortunately it is one of the projects I don’t have a previous draft for, so it’s going to take me a while. In the meantime, people have spoken: Overwhelmingly, people want standalone, one-shot stories, that aren’t related either to upcoming or previous stories. So I’ll whip some of those up and post them. But at least one person did also particularly request the idea of a teaser or trailer in written form, and I do want to do at least one of those, because I want to play with the format – thanks to that person for giving me Ideas.

Speaking of writing projects after The Ferryman’s Apprentice, those are still progressing. The King’s City is still on track for its first-half-2020 publishing date, but I’m expecting to announce the date and (and run a cover reveal) within the week.

As mentioned above, I have also set the next project, and while that’s still on hush for now, I’ll have more information about that as I go. I’ll probably give glimpses as I work on it – and for now the working title abbreviation is FB. If I use that abbreviation, I’m definitely talking about the New Project, not Facebook.

Liberation Industries is now also off hiatus, and we’re putting together new content for that. We’ll be cobbling together episodes via stream and voice call for a while, but we’re still playing games. In the meantime, why don’t you check out some of our backlog?

And finally, I do hate to do this, and I want you to know there’s no pressure. But I have had several contracts postponed or vanished entirely, including at least one event management contract, so my income stream is drying up a bit. If you have the means and are willing, please consider giving me a little boost by buying a copy of The Ferryman’s Apprentice Part One (links on the site page, where you can choose your distributor), supporting my Patreon, or even just spreading the word if you liked my stuff – maybe someone else you know will, too.

And that’s about it from me. Blog posts will start in earnest next week. As always, feel free to reach out on Twitter, or in the comments here. Stay safe and take care of yourselves and each other.

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

End of January Update

Hi all. At the beginning of this month, I wrote a post about naming the new year, and how I was going to make some changes to my organisational skills this year.

As you can see, while I’ve been relatively on time with my chapter posting (at least, compared to previous years), I definitely haven’t picked up with the blog posts. I’ve been pretty flat out, what with getting home from the holidays and diving pretty much directly into some convention volunteering and then the job hunt. Those of you who follow my Twitter will have seen a few photos of me floating around from Arcanacon, wearing myself out but having a great time doing it. Continue reading “End of January Update” →

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

Changing Venues

Hi all — just a quick update. You’ll see on the Support Me page that there is currently no listing for the Ferryman’s Apprentice hard copies. This is because, as I mentioned a while back, I’m moving a lot of my distribution channels around. The Ferryman’s Apprentice will only be available in e-book for a while (though I do have some hard copies myself so if you desperately need one for some reason, do contact me and we can chat about that).

I hope that the hard copies won’t be offline for more than a month, while I make sure that the changeover is going the way it’s supposed to. I’ll be sure to notify everyone when the print copies are available for purchase again, and I’ll update the Support Me page with all relevant information.

Thanks in advance for your patience and understanding.