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.
Last year when visiting our journalist friend Eve Conant in D.C., I asked Eve for advice in getting my own writing career started. She passed on some advice that had been given to her at one point by a mentor, and that advice stuck with me. While I don’t remember her exact words, the gist of it was to think about building my writing career on three pillars:
I have a new short story in Issue #11 of Compelling Science Fiction called “Targeted Behavior.” It’s about a tech startup in San Francisco attempting to “solve” homelessness via pharmaceutical means (which, as you might guess, doesn’t go quite as planned). It’s free to read online, but please consider subscribing or purchasing the Kindle edition anyway. Editor Joe Stech is doing great work.
Like anyone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, I think about homelessness everyday. It’s impossible not to, given the current state of the housing crisis. Thousands of people live on the streets without permanent shelter, some of them quite visibly in tents or sleeping rough, others (who might sleep in their cars, or couch surf) much less so.
I just returned from the 2018 Nebula Conference in Pittsburgh. It was my first writing con of any kind, and going in I was nervous. When I signed up (and reserved my hotel, and purchased my flight) I knew literally zero people who would be attending the con. Some I followed on Twitter (and some of those even followed me), but in terms of people I’d actually met in person–none. I was that unconnected with the sci-fi/fantasy writing community. And I knew that was something I needed to fix.
To celebrate the release of my first book in print, I’m giving away a prize to a random purchaser of my novelette “The Icelandic Cure.”
Since the story is about genetic engineering, I thought a DNA-related prize would be appropriate.
The Prize
One 23andMe Health + Ancestry Kit (retail price $199)
or
$150 cash (if you’ve already gotten your 23andMe results, or don’t want them)
The Rules
Contest rules are simple:
The contest will run until June 15, 2018. I’ll announce the winner and award the prize by June 22nd.
I don’t directly profit from sales of the book–I won the 2016 Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction prize which granted a flat fee prize of $1000. But I’d still like to do what I can to boost sales and promote the story.
This is a strong, thoughtful story that inspires hope for the future, curiosity about medical progress, and sheer terror at what might be done in its name.âPublishers Weekly
Thank you, and good luck!
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The contest winner is Hardy Stegall of Pretty Prairie, Kansas. Congratulations Hardy!
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