NYC Midnight short story competition

Somehow, against all conceivable odds, I have made it into the finals of the NYC Midnight short story competition.  Therefore, instead of working on my podcast this weekend, I'll have 24 hours to write a 1,500 word short story on a subject I will have no idea about until it's time to start writing.

I'm blown away that I made it through the first two rounds.  That means I have two short stories that I think are good enough to send out for publication.  Just need to figure out where to send them.

Podcast is on track still - should be able to record the first few and release them before the end of May.  Those of you who have submitted stories - expect to hear from me soon.

Cheers!

Cyberpunk fantasy - or how I learned to stop worrying and combine magic and technology

The short story collection I'm working on takes place in a world I've been working on creating for quite a while. It's not Earth, but it's not a defined "alien" world colonized by humans. It's just another place, like Discworld or Narnia or Westeros. So that makes it fantasy rather than sci fi, right? Also, there's magic in it.

But the world also contains modern/futuristic technology - flying cars, computers, gadgets and gizmos, digital teeth, all of which are powered and operated by a combination of straight up technology and a little bit of magic. Examples:

-Buildings are hexed to be "bigger on the inside" (yes, like Doctor Who but with magic) 

-One of my main characters practices "datamancy," the act of using magic to hack computer systems - she summons "daemons" to infiltrate data systems, crack code, and the like. I'm still figuring out how all that works.

-My main PI character can take an image he has in his mind of someone and use magic to transfer it onto photo paper, then upload that photo to the 'net and do a search on that person.

So here's my question, my desire to brainstorm some of this with you.

The main complaint/critique/question/blank staring face thing I get from people is this: If there's magic, why bother with technology - why combine the two? 

Well, my answer is this: Why would the existence of magic as a known quantity within society cause that society to stop development in a Medieval fantasy setting, as is so often the case with fantasy? What does Middle Earth look like in a thousand years? Is everyone there really content with fantasy feudalism forever, or would an industrial revolution happen eventually? I mean yeah we can get into arguments about the Orcs being a symbol of the pitfalls of industrialization, especially during the battle with the Ents, but that's beside the point, isn't it? What does an industrial revolution and the development of modern tech look like in a world where everyone knows about and incorporates magic into their daily lives? 

Substitute Middle Earth with Discworld and I have the same question. And Sir Terry addressed my question a little bit with books like Raising Steam, where we see the development of a railroad. He did take Discworld out of a Medieval/Renaissance setting a little bit, but not by much. Brandon Sanderson ...I really don't want to talk about Mistborn, but it is my understanding that the later books after the first trilogy take place in a similar modern tech/magic setting. China Mieville has New Crobuzon, a sort of steampunk surrealist masterpiece that shatters genre boundaries and does in fact take place in an industrialized world with a little bit of magic in it. Dune can be argued to be science fantasy, because there's a little bit of magic inherent in Spice vision, but it also takes place in a society that has shunned technology and gone back to a kind of spacefaring feudalism. 

But then the second question comes, and I don't really have a good answer for it: What are the rules of magic in my world? When someone picks up a hand terminal (data tablet, handheld computer thing...) that is powered by a combination of actual technological hardware and magic, where does the one end and the other begin? 

My answer so far has been thus: Technomancy, the science of combining technology and magic, requires that each gadget begin with a totally magic-free foundation. The motherboards, chips, memory cards, all the hard wired stuff, has to be entirely technological. Magic only comes in when the item is imbued with power - maybe it has a magical everlasting battery. Maybe it uses a magical networking protocol that accesses the 'net through means other than traditional radio waves. Maybe it's hexed in some other way.

Same thing with vehicles. The car itself, the physical hardware of the car - wheels, engine, sheet metal, whatever, has to be physical, material, non-magical. But then it can be imbued with magic to operate - endless fuel, flying capabilities, things like that. 

So this post has gotten a lot longer than I intended.

Anyway. You folks interested in cross-genre stuff. What do you think? What tips can you give me to create a coherent tech-fantasy cyberpunk-ish magic-having kickass world that you can wrap your head around and totally believe?

My resolution for 2017

A Resolution

I hereby resolve to blur the lines between fiction and reality, to break through dimensional walls, to mess with space-time, to turn the multiverse upside down and shake out its pockets to find its secret stash. I will know the unknowable, eff the ineffable, evit the inevitable, and tang the intangible truths of the cosmos. This I vow in my own name. Signed in the presence of a notary made of sentient fog.

New year - here's what I'm up to

Went to a writing meetup tonight and wrote 1700 words of a brand new short story.

So what I've got now is: 1) a world that I've created and have a pretty good sense of, and 2) two really good characters, and so I can start pounding out short stories within that framework. The adventures of Rex Jaxon, private eye, and Jasmine Orpeth (her last name still under debate), master hacker and datamancer, in the sci-fantasy world of Allanaland (name still under debate), a world where magic and technology coexist and where I shamelessly attempt to ape the humor of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett within a "weird-slipstream" cross-genre thingamajig inspired by the mad surrealistic genius of China Mieville (a genius I could never hope to even begin to approach).

Edited to add:

A little more detail.

I've been working on world-building for a while now, first creating Chelandia, where my latest stalled novel takes place, and then modifying Chelandia into something a little less unwieldy and creating Allanaland.  This is now the second short story I'll have written in the Allanaland universe, which feels like a place I can have a lot of fun.  I've also decided to stop trying to write novels for now, and just focus on these kind of episodic short stories.  I've got a lot of wiggle room within my framework but also a structure that I can build off of.  

So that's what I'm up to.

Oh, and unfortunately, I won't be posting excerpts of these here because I think I'm aiming at creating an Allanaland Anthology book collecting these short stories, and I'll want to try to get that published.  Publishers are picky about what you publish on the internet before you submit it for publication, although somehow a lot of people do just sort of get their websites turned into books, so I'm not sure how that works.

Anyway.  Bit of a ramble.  Here's to 2017, the year It All Comes Together for me.  Right?  Right.  

New writing exercise/game! - "Random Object Generator"

Alright- new game. Give me the name of a fictional object. Just the name. For example, "Whirling flooper." I will then describe said object in a hopefully clever and amusing paragraph. For example, "A whirling flooper is a tool for untangling twisted lengths of garden hose using an electromechanical application of the time-tested method of just flinging the damned hose around and cursing at it until it untangles itself."


Another example:  "Wheel rats. Wheel rats were a briefly innovative solution to the age-old problem of having to replace all four tires at once on an all wheel drive vehicle. Wheel rats would be placed inside of each tire and would be trained to automatically patch any punctures with a special sticky solution that they would excrete from special glands that had been genetically engineered into their forepaws. Unfortunately, all wheel rats quickly suffocated and died upon placement into the tires, which rendered the whole experiment pointless and led to the expensive problem of having rat corpses bouncing around your tires, which then had to be replaced anyway because ew. "

Whatchoo got?

Stolen from here: https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/546445/

I'm also doing this here: https://www.facebook.com/Ethanthej/

75 word story

Here's a 75 word story I wrote for this writing forum.  The subject is "Outsiders."

Ponyboy

Ponyboy glanced out the window. There were so many new skyscrapers that Tulsa’s art deco skyline was swallowed up.

He glanced down again. No new messages.

Maybe Darry and Sodapop didn’t make it. The sales guy had warned them of the risks, but there was no dissuading Darry.

So here Ponyboy sat, a hundred and fifty years from home, and alone in a way that nobody else on the planet could ever be.

A new project - I'll write your story!

Give me the bones of a story - beginning, middle, end, as much detail as you'd like.  Add character names, plot elements, genre, tone (should the story be serious or funny), etc, whatever you'd like. 


I'll then write your story.  Word count and time frame will depend on how much fun I have with it, but I'll try to have it done in a few days to a week.   


Let's see how this goes. 


(This isn't an April Fool's joke - I really want to do this!)