My Debut Novel “The Sky Woman” is Available for Preorder

The Sky Woman is available for preorder.

About five years ago I started work on a novel based on ideas that had been germinating for at least a few years. People close to me knew I was working on a new book, but I didn’t tell anyone what it was about. I’d learned (the hard way) that when I spoke about my fiction ideas, I somehow lost the drive to develop those ideas in writing. So I had fun working on my secret project.

I completed the first draft eight months later, on my wedding anniversary. Kia–almost always my first reader–read it and really enjoyed it (though she had plenty of feedback). I felt encouraged enough to think this novel might be one worth publishing. My first two novel attempts (A Falling Forward Motion, The Yew Tree) were full of good ideas, but ended up with flaws that felt unfixable. But I felt good about the newest novel, and early feedback was encouraging.

Instead of sending it straight out to publishers, I decided I would pay my dues by writing and publishing a few short stories. I figured it would be helpful to have a few publishing credits before approaching potential agents. Some friends suggested self publishing, but I didn’t want to go that route. I wanted to pass the hurdle of editors reading and evaluating my work. As a newish writer, I didn’t want to get caught in the trap of becoming overly enamored with (and potentially less critical of) my own work. I felt the same way when I started out in the music industry (I did eventually learn to trust my own taste and co-founded my own label, but not before being signed to Megatone and Sony-BMG in the early nineties).

So–I had a plan. But writing short fiction proved harder than expected. I sent out a short story I’d written years earlier, which was promptly rejected. After banging my head against the wall with false starts and bad ideas for a few weeks (or was it months?) I realized my mind was still in the world of my novel. I wasn’t ready to leave the world I had meticulously created.

So I wrote the sequel.

That took about a year, but now I had two unpublished books in my quiver. And I finally felt ready to get serious about writing and publishing short fiction. My plan was to write six science fiction short stories, and get at least three of them published in professional publications (defined by the SFWA as those with a certain circulation/subscription base, paying at least six cents a word). At that point I would be able to join the SFWA as an Active member, vote on the Nebulas, and generally be legit. With such credentials, landing an agent and a book deal would be piece of cake. Right?

In August of 2015 I submitted my first story, to Asimov’s. I received a polite but generic rejection email from Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams just a few days later (record time, I learned later–I guess I didn’t make it past the first slush reader). More rejections followed (though not quite as quickly) from F&SF, Analog, and Clarkesworld. I ended the year with nine rejections, no sales.

Undeterred, in 2016 I went all in, writing short stories at the rate of about one per month, and keeping all my stories out for submission if at all possible. In May of that year I sold my first story, The Beef, to Strange Horizons, a publication to which I will be forever grateful. That sale, and a positive comment about the story from Bruce Sterling (on this blog), significantly bolstered my confidence.

Hey, I’m a writer.

I ended 2016 with that one sale, about fifteen stories written, and ninety rejections. Granted, I probably went too broad in some of the publications I submitted to, but it was the year of Wayne Gretzky strategy (as in you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take).

Around that time I received a call for submissions from an independent publisher in London. Flame Tree Press was looking for unpublished speculative fiction novels. On a whim, I sent The Sky Woman. I still had faith in my master plan, but I was open to alternate paths. But months later, when I hadn’t heard anything back, I figured Flame Tree wasn’t interested.

In 2017, I started to have some writing success. I sold my second story (The Fo’dekai Artifact, to Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores). My novelette The Icelandic Cure won the 2016 Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction contest (and is now available for purchase, either directly from Omnidawn, from Powell’s, or amazon). And I sold The Equationist to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (after no fewer than nineteen kind, constructive rejection notes from C.C. Finlay).

Buoyed by this run, I started working on my query letter for The Sky Woman. Starting in August, I sent out query letters to agents who I thought might be a good fit.

Can you guess what happened? More rejection. Nine agents turned me down in the space of three months. But at that point it didn’t even phase me. Their loss.

In late 2017 I received an email from Flame Tree Press. Editor Don D’Auria had read The Sky Woman, really enjoyed it, and wanted to pick it up for Flame Tree’s new fiction imprint. Great news!

After looking into Flame Tree, everything appeared to be legit. Contract negotiations went smoothly. It wasn’t my original plan–I’d hoped to get an agent first. But going with Flame Tree was a big step in the right direction.

So I’m happy to announce that The Sky Woman will be published on Flame Tree’s new imprint Fiction Without Frontiers, and is currently available for preorder on amazon.

If you enjoy science fiction (or know someone who does), I’ll just ask you straight up–please buy and/or gift the book. In the coming months I’ll be posting excerpts, world-building notes, and introductions of the characters, but for the moment I’ll just ask that you preorder it, knowing nothing about the story.

This is a big moment for me, and I could use your help.

If you preorder The Sky Woman, please let me know in the comments.

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