Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
Hooray! Thinking Ink Press has a new book out, BEYOND THE FENCE, a collection of short stories by Marilyn Horn! We’ve just got the proof now, but the proof was approved, and we’ll be putting the book into distribution SOON! Also, the art’s by my wife, Sandi Billingsley, and we got a very nice print from Fracture Me of the front cover art:
w00+!
-the Centaur
Wow, something awesome just happened. Our publishing company, Thinking Ink Press, independently invented the idea of a postcard short - a flash fiction story on a postcard - and a new one has just been published which really ups the ante in the genre with its postmodern take on a postmodern book, illustrated with a mashup of The Book of Kells and a Nook!
Finnegan's Firewall: Awesome art by my wife Sandi Billingsley, great design by Keiko O'Leary, cool story by David Colby, all in a postcard! Right now you need to get this in person from Thinking Ink, but we’re working on making it possible for you to check it out!
-the Centaur
THIRTY DAYS LATER was reviewed on Publisher’s Weekly, and my two stories got a great review:
Each [story in THIRTY DAYS LATER] is broken into two separately titled parts, with events in the second part unfolding 30 days after those in the first. Anthony Francis, in “The Fall of the Falcon/The Rise of the Dragonfly,” uses that interval to work a crafty time-travel paradox into a futuristic tale of “infectious Foreign gearwork” run amok.
THIRTY DAYS LATER officially comes out June 1st, but you can order it now on Amazon! Check it out!
Hey, everyone! I’m reading my flash fiction story “Solomon’s Baby” at the Flash Fiction Forum this Wednesday at 7PM at the Works Gallery in downtown San Jose, which is conveniently located at 365 Market Street underneath the Market Street side of the Convention Center garage (so you will almost certainly be able to find parking!)
"Solomon’s Baby” is a nice little flash of science fiction located at the intersection of Larry Niven and the Twilight Zone, and was previously published online at 365 Tomorrows (if you want spoilers) and hopefully will be released as a Flashcard (short story on a postcard) from Thinking Ink Press later this year. We’ll likely have a variety of short Flashcards and Snapbooks from Thinking Ink Press on hand, as well as some of the fine books put out by this very centaur. Drop by and hear some cool short short fiction!
-the Centaur
I think it’s in the contract of a guy called “the Centaur” to support the Kickstarter for the HOTBLOOD! comic - “A Centaur in the Old West!” This quirky centaur-themed comic with a “Brokeback Mountain” vibe - about a centaur secretary, his criminally minded boss, their romance, and exploding trains - completed earlier this year, and has already hit its first goal, so the HOTBLOOD! print omnibus will be, well, printed. But now the project’s just 18 hours - and 5 thousand dollars - away from the "stretch goal” which will enable Toril Orlesky to offer for free the sequel comic, Zarco, about the centaur sheriff who will track our two heroes (or villains?) down.
Toril’s art has been becoming increasingly accomplished and ambitious, and I hope you’ll all consider supporting the Kickstarter to bring the sequel to this great project to life!
-the Centaur
It is with an enormous sigh of relief that I can announce that THIRTY DAYS LATER will indeed be available by Clockwork Alchemy!
Above is the stack of books as they arrived at my house today, and below is my smile when I inspected the shipment!
I don’t even want to start to go into the snafus which happened at the last minute, because they are OVER! I can at last add this to the stack, and move on. More later on how THIRTY DAYS LATER is Thinking Ink Press’s first fiction anthology, how it features the next of the Jeremiah Willstone stories, and why you want to watch out for yaks and Sasquatch … but for now … they’re here!
-the Centaur
So if I haven’t posted here in the past few days it’s because I’ve been FREAKING OUT about an unexpected problem with a project, where two separate contributors had computer failures and travel disruptions. What seemed like a nice, on-time, if tight project became a total freakout O.M.G.-we-may-miss-the-date over the course of a week and a half.
That slow slide off the cliff was halted today and it looks like we’re back on track, but it was touch and go for a while - I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and sent a round of emails trying to get things on track, which worked - but I found out a more experienced coworker had been worried about this last month, and had been trying to say so.
Ah well. Hard lessons. I think it will be fine … but I was motivated to take this picture for this blogpost as I sat here and worked on it, and after a bit, I realized why: it’s another example of unexpected complications. What you see is a giant pile of cat bedding, which didn’t work … because why sleep on something warm, fuzzy, and sheltered when hard shingles will do just fine.
And who could have anticipated that, but a cat. Sigh.
-the Centaur
Viiictory! I successfully completed Nanowrimo for the fourteenth time - adding 50,000 words to PHANTOM SILVER, Dakota Frost #5. And, by working hard, I did it!
Because of work, life, and other writing, I got behind early this month, and had to press hard to really make it. But I successfully got it off my plate one day early. Because Nano’s site counts words differently than Microsoft Word, I had to push a bit past my Word word count, and so saw something I rarely see on this graph: a negative velocity debt, meaning I could write backwards and still end up finishing the count (at least the Word count) exactly on time.
For a bit late in the month, especially around the 26th, it was as bad as I’ve ever gotten it: 6000+ words behind only 5 days from the end of the month. But somehow I managed to pull it out, setting a couple of daily records on writing … though I never even came close to my absolute max writing rate of 7,000 words a day.
Strangely, even though Camp Nano doesn’t have November’s holidays, it still works out that most of the writing gets done near the end of the month. Go figure.
Alright, late, tired, going to bed, more commentary later.
-the Centaur
So after catching up for a while on Camp Nano, I fell behind again … because I and my wife traveled back to Greenville, South Carolina to assist my mother’s rehab from knee surgery, and frankly that’ more important than any amount of word count. The good news is, she’s doing very well, and came home from the hospital yesterday … the even better news is, that my wife and my mom patched it up after eight years of not speaking to each other, a feat which I didn’t think was even possible. What a wonderful trip!
I lost my momentum the moment I hopped on that plane, and after that it was tough to get it back when I was caring for Mom - you can see the dent in the schedule around the 20th - and getting back on track after that required a full court press. But, in the past several days, I was able to do just that, and managed to pump out 2000+ words on all of the past five days, and double that on three of those. As of tonight, I am caught up.
As for now, there’s two days left, which I could tackle at a normal pace—though I’ll likely try to finish by Friday so that I can chill out on Saturday and have a nice relaxing weekend.
Wish me luck.
-the Centaur
… we may still pull it out. We’ve been in worse scrapes ...
Er … well, no we haven’t, but it’s still clearly possible. More news in a bit.
-the Centaur
Excellent news - THIRTY DAYS LATER has been reviewed by the Punkettes!
Need help steaming up your Summer? The other day I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to read the THIRTY DAYS LATER anthology put on by Thinking Ink Press. I wasn’t expecting the soirée of steam/clock infusion. I soon found my tea turning cold and me turning the next page. Thirty Days Later is full of interesting diverse stories that will appeal to a wide variety of readers with sightings of Royals, ghosts, dragons, Japanese folklore, spies, and even a Sasquatch(?!).
Very cool! Go check the review out, and remember, THIRTY DAYS LATER comes out in a couple of months!
I was literally dreaming all night about the chapter I wrote today - I got up several times with tears in my eyes, as one of Dakota’s enemies unexpectedly turned into one of her strongest allies. Fascinating what a fictional world can do to you. But the upshot is, I got 4,000 words done for two days in a row … and have a clear path for what I need to write tomorrow.
We may win this one yet! Assuming I survive this weekend’s craziness! Which I can’t tell you about, but … aaaa!
-the Centaur
4200 words today! Keep that up for 3 more days, I’ll be more or less back on track.
And then I’ll still have 18,000 words left to write this month. AAAAA!
Onward!
-the Centaur
Is the novel back on track? NO. But am I up to speed? YES.
Of course, I know I’ll lose more days, so really, to finish, I’m going to need to do even more than the—hork!—2750 words per day that my spreadsheet predicts I’ll need to do to get back on track.
But I’ve gotten a much better groove, the story is starting to dovetail nicely, and some sections which felt out of place have, after a few moves, found a nice home in the story.
The rocket is taking off, but there’s a long climb ahead.
Back to it.
-the Centaur
The good news is I wrote ~2800 words yesterday, more than I needed. The bad news is I wrote 900 of those words by hand in my notebook (so as to not disturb the other diners in the dark and quiet restaurant with the typing coming from my glowing laptop), and took most of this afternoon’s writing session to get them all typed in. Argh! Still, I’m happy with the results ...
“So,” Avenix said. “We have begun to seek out, in all our holdings, other threats—”
I raised my hand. “Hang on,” I said. Filling in the blanks, this ghost had to have been a fae hunter; that’s why they called me. But Avenix wasn’t saying that outright: he seemed to be feeding me my own lines. “You feared a threat to your realm … started a search for dangerous use of magic … then called me to deal with the problem. Did I get that right?”
“Well … yes,” Avenix said.
“Don’t lie to me!” I said, slapping my hand on the table. “What’s your real goal?”
“I am not lying to you,” Avenix said.
“Why would he lie to you?” Nyissa asked. “It’s a reasonable course of action—”
“Are you all insane?” I said. “Do you have no memories? Ten years ago—ten months ago—you’d have all been tearing each other apart, lashing out at everyone in sight, blaming anyone you could get your hands on to deal with your problems. You’d have been at war with Sidhain just because this happened on her doorstep—”
“Not likely,” Avenix said, shuddering.
“Save it! She has a real bad attitude,” I said, “but she’s pretty damn inoffensive for an alleged apocalyptic horror, and I’ve seen you in action against witchhunters! You can’t expect me to believe you’re all playing nice just because I came along!
Sounds like Dakota and Avenix are going to have it out. Onward!
-the Centaur
Several times in the past few days, I’ve finally gotten up to speed on Camp Nanowrimo. Only problem is, because I got so far behind, I need to go 50% faster than I’m already doing … and to catch up this weekend, even if such a thing was possible, I’d have to write eight times as much as I’ve already written today. Aaaa!
Still, onward!
-the Centaur
… to how I made so little progress yesterday: halfway through yesterday’s writing session, I started entering yesterday’s wordcount into today’s row of the spreadsheet, effectively cutting my apparent wordcount for the day in half.
That would do it.
No excerpts; I just experimented with a new chapter 1 and I want to try it on for size before I share it. But it seems to dovetail nicely with what I’ve already written … and it was 800 free words, springing fully formed from my pen, uh, keyboard.
Onward!
-the Centaur
Gaah! How do I spend an hour writing a new long scene and only get 500 words out of it? 17% done, 30% behind. Aaa! Still, I got this. Just … need … to … write … faster ...
-the Centaur
A real conversation from my life. Love my life.
-the Centaur
Is the novel back on track? NO. But I am reaching the point where I have enough traction in the story that I’m starting to make real progress. I’m 14,000+ words behind, I need to write over 2,500 words a day to finish my 50,000 words in the month … but at least I’m making real progress now. An excerpt:
The looming tower of Brendelbane Manor leered down at me, its three irregular windows looking even more like a skull. Yes, it was the same room, the nook at the front of Alissa van Kreveld’s room—but was there now flickering light within?
And … was the thing we’d seen Alissa van Kreveld? The phantom hadn’t looked like a Scottish refugee or a woman of Dutch descent; its hair and face had looked distinctly Asian, like a concept drawing for a mash-up of The Grudge and Memoirs of a Geisha.
So if it wasn’t her … who was it? What was it?
In horror movies, it seemed like you had a fifty-fifty chance of a ghost being a human ghost or a real demon. My personal experience told me next to nothing about ghosts, but any kind of phantom had a seventy percent chance of being a projectia, and a ninety percent chance of it turning out to be something hostile.
I stopped for a moment. No. That was my bad attitude talking. Chris Valentine’s projectia, the Streetscribe’s projectia, Cosgreave’s specter: all hostile. My Dragon, Arcturus’s vines, Avenix’s tentacle monster: all benign. The odds were closer to fifty-fifty. Even if this ghost had chased us out of the property with phantom fire, it might not be a hostile.
Still … my girlfriend was inside, and this thing spat phantom fracking fire.
Screwing up my courage, I drew my sword, ascended the steps … and went inside.
Onward!
-the Centaur
