Hello dear readers.

After much deliberation, the Swordfights & Spaceflights crew has decided to leave the Substack platform due to the management’s decision to continue to platform Nazi, anti-trans, and fascist propaganda. Our consciences are clear knowing that we won’t be on the same platform as problematic (at best) content creators, nor supporting a platform that gives voice to propaganda.

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Erebus Dawning

Chapter 1

Nyx hovered near the closed door to the command deck of the Thanatos. The slight increase in gravity pulled her down. Malcam and Kai hadn’t followed her—yet. C’est bon. She gripped the door frame with her fingertips as she swung her feet to the floor. No use falling through the sliding hatch and onto her face as the gravity shifted from the corridor’s low gees to whatever level was present on the bridge.

She floated inches above the ground, heart racing. Sneaking away from the main boarding party to get here was still a dereliction of duty. All so she could prove to her father that she was the legacy of his ship, the Medusa, and the rightful new captain.

Nyx put her hand on the door pad. The harsh red glow indicated locked.

“Come on, connard,” she swore in Queen’s Speech. “Work.” Her heartbeat accelerated more. It wouldn’t be long before someone noticed she had abandoned her post taking command of Engineering with the boarding party. Her job was to control the ship from there. But if she wanted to deliver her father’s obsession to him, she needed to be on the command deck. If she didn’t, there would be consequences.

Fingers shaking, Nyx yanked an electrical panel next to the pad off the wall, exposing a tangle of wires. A spray of sparks showered her long hair, but she quickly brushed them aside. An arc of blue shocked her fingertips as she disengaged the lock on the door. “Putain,” she swore again. Nyx shook the tingling from her quivering fingers. Acrid smoke poured from the open panel, and the blackened air burned her throat.

She bit her lip, placing her hand on the pad by the hatch. She knew what she would walk into. The Medusa’s Communications Officer had hacked and reprogrammed the Thanatos’ Ship Interface Android—Sia, for short—to run the ship into the edge of a singularity and forcibly take over the bridge while the crew was working to get off the edge of the black hole. The deck would be a bloodbath. The Medusa’s CO would have programmed Sia to leave only Captain Leo Matthews alive, since he knew where the planet-killing weapon, the Star of Erebus, was. Where her father’s obsession was.

The door whooshed open, and Nyx stumble-stepped onto the second level of the amphitheater-style deck and stared. Her gut flipped as she regained normal gravity.

Bodies were slumped over their workstations or crumpled onto the floor. The crew lay in puddles of blood, some still with weapons drawn. She exhaled heavily and furrowed her brow, leaning on the hatch-frame. Everyone was dead.

 Nyx didn’t expect Malcam’s plan to be so thorough. He was more brawn than brain, a bull of a man, whose generous spirit as a boy had been beaten out of him on the Medusa. It wasn’t like him to plan an op so well. It was like him for it to be this cold and brutal.

She turned to the Executive Officer’s station to her left. The body of the well-known ExO sat at his console, his coifed, red-bearded head blown from his shoulders. Nyx spun around, her gut churning, and searched for the First Officer. She lay in a pool of blood with her arm draped over the edge of the second level of the deck, weapon drawn and still dangling from her fingers. The Communications Officer lay next to her, his arms folded underneath him, slouched forward and half-leaning on the rail. All the famous Thanatos crew were posed in a bloody tableau, as if they were on a stage performing their last acts of valor.

Even Sia lay on the main floor of the command deck, her brown skin singed from a single shot to the head and leaking black coolant. Nyx walked down the center stairs and bent to look at the Sia’s damaged parietal. She fingered through the exposed wiring on the side of the android’s bald head. She was fixable, but it would take time.

She glanced at the captain’s empty chair, black leather worn from use. Beneath it sat a balled-up man.

Captain Leo Matthews stared into empty space, rocking erratically. He never struck her as a pillar of inner strength, but falling apart on deck wasn’t something a captain of a renowned ship would do. Maybe seeing all his crew massacred had been too much.

Nyx knelt by his side, her hand lingering on the grip of a small black energy pistol holstered on her thigh.

The slack-faced Captain Matthews looked up at her with blank hazel-green eyes.

“Where is it?” Nyx whispered. The Star of Erebus had to be nearby somewhere. Matthews had kept it safe for many years, according to rumors.

“Mon petit papillon. What are you doing here?”

A chill eased up Nyx’s spine. Mon petit papillon. Her maman used to call her that. She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She had a mission. “I’m here for the Star. Where is it?”

He drew his thin lips into a line. “What?”

“The Star of Erebus. Once upon a time, you had a big mouth.” She fingered her pistol grip. “Everyone in the black knows.” Matthews had boasted about having the damned thing on board one night while he was at a bar on Elysion many years ago, or so the story went. It was Matthews’ assurance that he and his crew would always be in the black, because as long as the queen thought he had it, she let the Thanatos fly. And everyone in the black left the Thanatos alone because of the boast. Until now.

“That’s what we’re here for. Give it to me,” Nyx demanded. Her father wanted the Star so badly he would go up against the most dreaded pirates of the known universe.

Matthews tensed. “What do you want with a god?”

“What? A god? I want the weapon. Not the damned god.” Nyx scrunched her face, confused. He surely didn’t think she wanted the actual Star of Erebus, one of the seven gods worshipped by half the known universe. She wanted the weapon. The planet-killer that had been only a myth among pirates until Matthews’ drunken boasting. It explained how the Thanatos had slipped by the Queen’s Navy so often. Queen Phoebe knew all along that he had it and therefore let the Thanatos go. Now her father wanted that for the Medusa, and Nyx was going to get it for him.

“And what’ll you be doing with her?” Matthews growled, raking a hand through his blond hair. With his back against the leather captain’s chair, he looked feral.

“We’ll hide it. Then we can leverage the rest of the crews’ lives for it.” Would he buy that? She had to convince him to give it to her. Somehow.

“Do you even know what she does?”

Nyx looked at him blankly. She didn’t. No one really did, beyond that it could kill a whole world. But Matthews clearly knew…

“No one should have the power to destroy a world. No. I won’t give up the Star of Erebus for all my life. It would be the end of the universe if I just let her go. She’s the salvation of this crew. Of me.” A sad look passed across his eyes.

“Exactly. It’ll be their salvation here and now.”

He smiled ruefully. “No one wants to end up in front of la reine’s firing squad.”

Nyx clenched her fists by her knee, scratching at the maroon fabric of her form-fitting jumpsuit. She could prove her worth to her father if she had the Star. Maybe even rank up. Get that much closer to her goal to inherit the Medusa. To have her own ship. Her own crew. Her own family.

“And no one wants to be shot out an airlock today.” Nyx grabbed the front of Matthews’ jacket and yanked him up. She spun him around to see the carnage on the command deck. “This is just the beginning of what they’ll do if you don’t hand over what they want. S’il vous plaît”

Her father could easily lose his temper and execute the entire Thanatos crew, especially if Malcam recommended it. What would he be capable of if he actually got a weapon powerful enough to destroy a planet? Nyx didn’t want to think about it. He was still her father. And her commanding officer.

Matthews’ eyes widened at the sight of the carnage on his bridge. A loud gurgling erupted in his gut, and he ripped away from her and vomited. With the back of his hand, he wiped his mouth.

Nyx covered her nose. The smell on the deck was becoming noxious, the iron of blood mingling with the burnt copper of fried circuits, and now Captain Matthews’ dinner.

The command deck door suddenly slid open.

“It’s too late now, anyway.” The captain grimaced.

“It’s only too late when you’re floating in the black,” boomed a voice from the second tier of the deck.

Nyx and the captain looked up to see a monster of a man standing on the stage above them, tongue pushing his lower lip. Captain Matthews reflexively stood in front of Nyx, vomit streaked down the front of his brown leather jacket and white mandarin-collared shirt, all the way to the crotch of his black pants.

Nyx put a hand on Matthews’ shoulder and pulled him back. “Malcam,” she oozed. “I didn’t expect you here. Aren’t you supposed to be rounding up the rest of the crew and taking them to the Medusa for sale to the mines?” It wasn’t pleasant, but selling hostages from raided ships to the asteroid mines was the best money the Medusa could make to keep her in the sky.

“It’s my mission,” Malcam growled. “I have the authority to tear this place to shreds until we find what we’re looking for. And I will.” He ran a hand from his ash-blond widow’s peak to the nape of his white neck. “Nyx Marcus, what are you doing here? You should be in Engineering, getting this beauty back up and running.”

“Wouldn’t be a problem if you hadn’t run her into the edge of a singularity to begin with. Besides.” She glanced behind her to Matthews.

Malcam’s nose flared. A silver ring pierced one nostril, and on the other, a glittering diamond caught the light.

Nyx didn’t know whether to smile or grimace. He wouldn’t want to hear that she was close to finding his prize.

“Did you find it yet?” He rested his hand on a heavy silver, wooden-handled projectile revolver resting on his waist.

She frowned and bit the inside of her cheek. Putain de merde. Quel branleur. If only Malcam hadn’t come. She would have gotten the information from the captain and been on her way with the Star to see her father. He was always in her way. She shook her head, “No.”

“Then you should have used your womanish devices.” He smiled and tipped his head, pulling at the black gauge-plug in his ear.

“I’m not some pre-AI War sex-Sia.” She ground her teeth.

Matthews snickered behind her.

“What are you laughing at?” Malcam growled.

“You two are funny. Lovers?” Matthews giggled.

Nyx screwed her face. “Ew. No.”

“What? Ew? What do you mean, ew?” Malcam stuttered.

“Just that you’re—you,” she said.

He rolled his ice-blue eyes. “You’re no catch yourself, princess.”

Matthews burst out laughing. “Mon petit papillon. Don’t listen to him. You turned out quite pretty. A lot like her.”

Nyx glanced back at the captain, her eyebrows drawn. He couldn’t mean her maman. The few people who spoke of her appearance always said how much Nyx looked like her. They were both petite white women with sable hair, fine, angular features, full bottom lips, and almond-shaped eyes. Vid-pics were the best Nyx had for memories. Her own were fuzzy at best. Her mother had died when she was a child, and her father wouldn’t talk of it, saying it was too traumatic. But Matthews couldn’t know her maman. He seemed too young.

Malcam flipped the snap on his holster and calmly lifted his pistol. “Enough. You’re both out of time,” he growled. “I might decide to shoot. And don’t think for a moment that your daddy can stop me.”

Nyx’s face went blank. Malcam’s clear blue eyes pierced the tepid air. Icy fingers gripped her spine.

“The Star of Erebus. Where is it?” Malcam waved his pistol, upper lip quivering like a mad dog.

The captain grinned and spun around with his arms spread. “Here, there and everywhere. Up and down and all around.”

“What the—?” Malcam’s pistol went limp. His hooded brow clenched. “Is he crazy?”

Captain Matthews grabbed Nyx and jigged around the bridge, avoiding the corpses of the crew. “It’s all dust and stars.”

She pulled against his hold, but he clung, yanking her across the deck in a wild gavotte.

Malcam’s gun blasted high in the air.

Captain Matthews stopped still at the sound, twitching in fear, and fell whimpering to his knees. Wide-eyed, he felt down the length of his body for wounds.

Malcam sneered and slowly lowered his gun to aim at the two dancers. “First shot was a warning. Second, I’ll put a hole through both of you.”

Nyx ducked, covering her head, glaring at Malcam. “T’as pas de couilles, enculé.” The mumbling captain would get them killed.

“What’s he saying? What’s he babbling about?” The panic rose in Malcam’s voice through his tightly grit teeth.

Nyx put a hand on the captain’s shaking head. She had to comfort him, calm him somehow so he’d trust her, though he was a near stranger. Something felt familiar about him, however. Some fuzzy memory that ran along the edge of her mind. She passed her hand through his tousled blond hair as she knelt beside him. “Matthews, what did you do with the Star? The weapon? Leo?”

He looked into Nyx’s eyes, stopped whimpering abruptly, and sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. “I destroyed her.” He curled into a ball and began rocking. “All dust and stars.”

Bile rose from Nyx’s gut. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. All that power…

“What’s he sayin’?” Malcam swung his gun.

“You’re going to get us killed,” she whispered, ears roaring. She hadn’t heard him right, had she? “You can’t be serious. What did you do with the Star of Erebus?” Nyx ran a hand across Matthews’ cheek. “Tell me where it is.”

He glanced up at her. “Everyone’s dead who knows. Now she’s gone. All gone. Secrets are meant to be hidden. Destroyed. She’d have destroyed everything. So, I destroyed her. I made sure she would be gone. I destroyed her, Nue.”

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About the Author

AJ Super is the author of the Seven Stars Saga, a trilogy published by Aethon Books and Blackstone Audio. Writing full time, they devour fantasy and science fiction in every medium, and even experiments with writing and reading other speculative fiction now and again.

They earned two Bachelors' degrees from the University of Idaho in the Creative Writing and Theater programs. They have been an author since they were old enough to write (and illustrate) a stapled-together ABC book, which is still packed away in a box of childhood memorabilia.

AJ is inspired by Ursula K. LeGuin, Anne McCaffery, Octavia Butler, Mercedes Lackey, and other amazing female science fiction and fantasy authors. They are active in several different writing communities and an SFWA member.

They currently lives in Idaho with their fuzz-brained kitties and supportive spouse.

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1

RYIA

There were guards nearby. Ryia could smell them—and not just because they stank of wine. She ducked into an archway, pressing her back against the stone and holding her breath. They clanked past in neat rows, long, thin swords dangling from their belts, purple tunics swaying in the foul summer breeze. Members of the Needle Guard, the king’s private army. They turned south, no doubt heading toward the slums where the Festival of Felice raged on.

North of the trade docks, the city was quiet. The nobles of Carrowwick didn’t worship the goddess of luck. For them, the festival was more of an inconvenience than a celebration. A nuisance—a distraction. In other words, it was exactly what Ryia had been waiting for. After all, it wasn’t as though she could just stroll in through the Bobbin Fort’s front gate.

The southern wall of the fortress was less than a stone’s throw away. A thirty-foot vertical with only the tiniest of handholds. She looked sternly at her fingers, dark eyes flashing.

“You lot up for this today?”

Her fingers didn’t answer, but she didn’t need them to. This wasn’t the first time she’d made this climb. If Callum Clem had his way, she doubted it would be the last time either, and if there was one thing she had learned in the past year, it was that Callum Clem always had his way.

Black fabric billowed out behind her like a silken shadow as she pulled herself up stone by stone with unnatural speed. The muted strains of off-key fiddle music from the celebrations to the south were punctuated by the slight scraping of sharpened steel knocking against the wall.

“Patience, loves,” she murmured to the half dozen axes lining her belt. “You’ll get your chance, don’t you worry.”

Guards fidgeted on the top of the wall, some six inches above her. She paused, lightly sniffing the air. Two of them. Sniffed again. One five paces to her left, the other twenty or more to her right, if she wasn’t mistaken. She chuckled silently to herself. Ryia was never mistaken. If she was, she would be rotting in one of the Guildmaster’s cells by now.

A colorful burst of light illuminated the sky, and Ryia was on the move again. The firework faded to ashes. In the seconds before the next burst of color, she vaulted over the wall, sprinted across the ramparts, and dropped over the opposite side, scurrying like a spider down into the courtyard below. The guards fidgeted with their armor, hiding their yawns behind gauntleted hands as the light show went on. Blind as desert moles.

Though that might be an insult to the moles.

Ryia pulled a bundle of leaves from the pocket of her cloak. They looked dull in the silvery light of the moon, but she knew in daylight they were vivid green. Outside the Bobbin Fort, there was only the Needle Guard to contend with. Inside, things got a little more complicated. The cloying taste of lemon burst on her tongue as she popped the leaves into her mouth. She wrinkled her nose. Disgusting, yes, but if it were any weaker, it would be more useless than a long sword in a tavern brawl. Anything less overpowering than lemon balm would be hard-pressed to throw off the nose of a lapdog, let alone a proper Adept Senser.

Hopefully she wouldn’t run into either.

She slunk forward a few steps, pausing behind a statue of Declan Day. Her fingers danced over her throwing axes as she studied the castle, bathed in the light of the fireworks. One… two… three windows over… one floor up. She gave a feral smile. The southern-facing window swung open, no doubt flooding the room inside with the scents of piss and fish. Carrowwick perfume, as the foreign sailors liked to call it.

This was going to be even easier than she’d hoped.

But just then the scent of stale urine vanished, replaced by a violently different odor. Mulched earth. Decay. A horribly familiar, creeping rot that sent her nostrils itching and tingling. Ryia froze and sank into a crouch, her right hand drifting up to grasp one of the long-handled hatchets strapped across her back. It was coming from the east.

She dropped her hand, melting back into the shadow of the statue. Not two seconds later came the sound of hushed voices, echoing from the east end of the courtyard.

“… sending me along with the party going to the auction. You know what that means…,” one voice was saying. Male. He sounded like a weasel… or maybe a snake? Either way, the fact that he sounded like anything at all meant that the people entering the courtyard were not Adept servants. A good sign.

She could see them now: one tall and thick, one short and slight. The short one whipped around to face the other. Female. A shock of braided red hair caught the moonlight. “I know drinking wine before your shift is against protocol,” the woman answered coolly.

“Oh come on, Evelyn, I’ve heard the stories. All bets are off, Garol said…,” Weasel-mouth continued. He sidled closer to Red, reaching for her waist.

Ryia slid around the statue. Just a few steps to the castle wall. Then she’d be out of sight for good and those idiot guards would never even be aware of her existence.

The distinctive ping of metal on metal rang out as Red poked a needle-thin blade into the man’s left shoulder plate.

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to, Maxwell?” she asked. “You could always check with my old bunkmates from the South Barracks if you need a bloody refresher.”

Ryia stifled a laugh as Red rammed her elbow into Maxwell the Weasel-mouth’s gut. She reluctantly turned away from the show. Twice the entertainment factor of those half-assed productions the Harpies put on in the Carrowwick Fair. Maybe these nobles and their hired swords were good for something after all.

She latched on to the stone wall, skittering up the side of the castle. She paused just beneath the open second-story window, listening. Nothing but deep, even breathing punctuated by snores so loud she was surprised she hadn’t been able to hear them outside the fort wall.

Another burst of color and light lit up the sky as she slipped into the room, casting her shadow over carpeting that probably cost more than half the slats in the Lottery. A few sputtering candles burned in their spun-glass wall sconces, dimly lighting the massive, four-poster bed along the back wall. On top of the bed lay what looked like a lumpy net full of dead fish. The lumpy net, of course, was Efrain Althea. Son of the queen of Dresdell’s sister, and a lesser prince of the far southern kingdom of Briel.

Ryia didn’t really give two shits who he was. Clem’s orders were always stunningly clear, and they didn’t tend to include titles and honors.

She stalked across the room, sliding one of the hatchets from her back and twirling it expertly between her fingers. Thin, leather-wrapped handle. Slender, razor-sharp bit. Was it normal to be attracted to a weapon? She was only kidding, of course…

Mostly.

Faster than Efrain could blink his wine-bleary eyes, Ryia was upon him. The bit of her hatchet tickled the rolls beneath his cleft chin.

“You’d have to be even dumber than you look to scream,” she said. “You see, you might startle me. And when I’m startled…” She dragged the sharp edge lightly across his throat. Not enough to draw blood. Just possibly enough to draw urine.

Efrain nodded hurriedly, and Ryia pulled back with a smile. She strode calmly toward the spindly table on the far side of the room, then sniffed a flagon of blood-red wine. Undoubtedly Brillish—didn’t smell rank enough to be Gildesh. She wrinkled her nose and reached for a chunk of bread instead, tearing into it as she turned back to Efrain.

“You’ve been in this city a few weeks now. I take it you know who I am?” She gave another lupine smile, flashing her hatchet toward his watery eyes.

Her face was completely hidden by the shadows of her hood, but her weapons had a reputation of their own. After all, the Butcher of Carrowwick hadn’t earned her title by handing out bundles of daisies and kisses on the cheek. He sputtered as he caught sight of the markings on the blade in the low light. Ryia tutted softly, pacing back toward him.

“Looks like Felice’s luck is not smiling down on your pampered ass tonight, eh?”

She tucked her hatchet away, then leaned against the bedpost, ripping back into the bread.

“I—I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done,” Efrain finally stammered, pulling himself to his feet. His voice was just as obnoxious as she remembered it. Nasally. Whiny. A thick Brillish accent pulling at his vowels.

“My dear prince. Lying isn’t going to make this go any easier for you.” Ryia’s eyes grew hard, obsidian chips glinting deep in her skull. “You took something from Callum Clem. I think even you’re smart enough to know that was a bad move.”

Ryia watched, amused, as his jowls started to tremble. Prince or no, anyone who set foot inside the city walls of Carrowwick had heard stories about Callum Clem. Heard how he had joined his first syndicate at the age of seven, killed his first man before the age of ten. How over the past three decades he had duped and double-crossed almost every son of a bitch in the Lottery while still managing to keep his head. He was as cold as he was calculating. As slippery as he was ruthless. Just looking at Callum Clem the wrong way could earn you a beating. Stealing from the man? Well, that was as good as a death sentence.

Efrain reached for the bedside table with wine-swollen fingers, throwing shaky shadows on the walls.

“I have money. I have it right here.” He pulled a bag of coins toward him, counted out ten silver halves and five golden crescents, and held them toward Ryia. She scooped up the coins, pocketing them as Efrain looked on, hopeful.

“I’ll consider that a gift,” she said. “Because we both know that’s nowhere near enough to cover your entire debt.”

“M-my entire debt?”

Ryia took another bite of bread, speaking around it as she chewed. “Thousan’ crescents, by Clem’s coun’.”

His face reddened in outrage. Or maybe that was panic. “A thousand gold crescents? How in Adalina’s deepest hell do you figure that?”

Adalina. Ryia had always found it ironic that the do-nothing nobles worshipped the goddess of toil.

“Cost of the Foxhole. I think he’s being generous, personally, but then I’ve always thought Clem was a bit of a softheart.” Her grin widened as Efrain’s dark cheeks paled three shades in the muted candlelight. She wasn’t sure if anyone had called Clem that before. Or if anyone had ever suggested the Snake of the Southern Dock had a heart at all.

“The Foxhole?”

It had been one of the most popular gambling houses in the Lottery. One of the best scams Clem had ever run… until the raid. The Needle Guard had torn the place to pieces—and the Saints with it. The gang had been the most powerful force in the Lottery for years, and now they were the laughingstock of everyone south of the trade docks. Clem had never been a laughingstock before, and, unsurprisingly, he was not taking it well. His rage made him even more dangerous than usual: a king cobra where he had once been only a viper.

“I hope for your sake this stupidity is just an act, because if not, I’m not sure how you manage to wipe your own ass.”

She dusted the bread crumbs from her hands. Then she pulled the hatchet from her back again and dived across the room, pinning Efrain to the wall, one hand at his throat.

His whole body bobbed as he sucked in a shocked breath. Ryia leaned toward him, hissing in his ear. “A whole company of Needle Guard suddenly growing the stones to take on the Saints? Now where in the hells would they get the motivation to do something like that?” Efrain swallowed. Ryia went on: “Did you really think you were still one step ahead of us?”

Efrain sank to his knees as she released her grip. There on the floor, he drew one trembling breath after another. Ryia paced beside him, watching, head cocked like some lethal bird of prey.

“Please. I have more coin. You can take it. Take it and you will never see my face in the Lottery again, I swear it… I swear it by the goddesses Adalina and Felice—by the spirits of my ancestors.”

His eyes were wet as he peered up at her from the floor, pulling his Brillish namestone from the neck of his nightshirt. Pathetic. “You’re looking for mercy? From me?” She shook her head. “Efrain, you half-wit. I thought you said you knew who I was.” She watched his eyes grow wide as she spun her hatchet playfully around her nimble fingers.

“What are you going to do?”

“I would think someone whose lips are wrapped so tightly around the Needle Guard’s teat would know the Dresdellan punishment for theft.” She leaned over, separating out the index finger of his right hand.

“Theft?”

“Yes, Efrain, theft,” she said in the mock-patient tone of a frustrated schoolteacher. “We’ve been through this. You stole from the Saints of the Wharf. And don’t misunderstand me—we will have our repayment.” Her lip curled as she looked at the finery in the room. “Goddesses know you should be good for it. I’m just here to deliver a message. A reminder of what happens when you think you’re smarter than Callum-fucking-Clem.”

She slammed her weapon down, slicing through his finger at the second knuckle. She pulled her other hatchet free of its sheath, clocking him in the back of the head with its butt before his scream had a chance to leave his lips.

Ryia pocketed the finger with one hand, letting Efrain’s unconscious body flop to the floor. She turned to leave, then paused as a roughly hammered iron coin fell from his breast pocket. It rolled a few unsteady inches before Ryia stopped it with her boot and picked it up, examining it in the light of the fireworks still bursting in the sky outside. She rubbed a thoughtful thumb over the blank front side, turning it over and examining the back. There, stamped into the shoddily wrought coin, was the faint imprint of a kestrel skull.

Ryia looked back down at Efrain, nudging his senseless form with a toe. “Well, that explains it.” She shook her head. “What in the hells have you gotten yourself into?”

Her question hung unanswered in the night air when she caught another whiff of it. That grisly smell of blood, old cellars, mildew, and decay. That terrible weight in her nostrils. Danger. And not just any danger. Her nose tingled painfully. This was the particular aura of danger that accompanied only the most deadly fighters in Thamorr—a scent she was horribly familiar with.

An Adept was nearby.

She froze, ears pricked as the door beside the bed creaked open. A tall shadow drifted into the room on silent feet. Like every Adept raised on the Guildmaster’s island, he was completely bald, clad in a long black robe trimmed in the brightest blue. His right cheek was marred by a brand of the Brillish royal seal. This was Efrain’s personal servant, then. The Adept’s nostrils flared as he turned his head slightly. There, inked on the side of his hairless skull, was a swirling letter S. A Senser—a watchdog used by the merchants and nobles of Thamorr to sniff out threats of violence.

Thanks to her speed and her use of lemon balm, this one was a little late to the party.

Ryia eyed the hatchets still clutched in her hands. Of the two types of Adept magic-wielders, Sensers were the weaker fighters by a long shot. Kinetics were the tricky, speedy bastards. Sensers were usually good at sounding the alarm and not much else. If she moved quickly, she could kill this one before he got the chance.…

The Senser turned his head again, his eyes resting on her at last. They were as blank and lifeless as every other branded Adept servant Ryia had ever encountered, so unlike the cruel and cunning eyes of the Guildmaster and his own personal army, called the Disciples. If she slit this slack-faced Senser’s throat, the Brillish crown would see it as a loss of gold and nothing more. After all, they had paid the Guildmaster good money for a mindless servant… not for a human being. But Ryia knew better than anyone just how human the Adept truly were.

Still, he had seen her. If she didn’t kill him, he would trot off and sound the alarm. She flexed her fingers, tightening her grip on her hatchets. The Butcher of Carrowwick didn’t show mercy, right? She had killed dozens of people in this city: guards and mercenaries and freebooters. But this Senser was none of those things. He was a slave, trapped in a life he might never have chosen, if he had been given the chance to choose at all. It was a fate Ryia could relate to.

In her moment’s hesitation, the Senser turned from the room in a whirl of his cloak, off to fetch someone who would ruin her fucking night, no doubt.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. She then patted the still-senseless Efrain on the shoulder. “It’s been fun, Efrain. Let’s do this again sometime, shall we?” She hurriedly tucked the coin into her pocket. Then she slipped out the window and into the night.

Less than a minute passed before Ryia was on the far side of the fort’s high walls again. The alarms chased her down the alleys, but she was already gone, nothing more than a shadow on the wind. The guards would know who had come to visit Efrain Althea tonight. But she had faced worse than the Needle Guard before. Much worse.

The salt breeze tugged at her hood as she wound her way back toward the dying party on the southern docks. She tossed Efrain Althea’s severed finger up and down, whistling an old Gildesh sea shanty as she went.

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About the Author

M.J. Kuhn is a fantasy writer by night and a mild-mannered marketing employee by day. She lives in the metro Detroit area with a very spoiled cat named Thorin Oakenshield. You can find more information about M.J. online at MJKuhn.com.

Find Among Thieves at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and anywhere else books are sold.

1
BALTHAZAR

Of all the times I’d been arrested, this was the only time I’d gotten pinched on purpose. I reminded myself of this in a vain attempt to keep my spirits up, as I squinted around the dank underbelly of the Cothis City Code Hall. I picked at my ale-soaked trousers, trying to ignore the way the heat from too many bodies made sweat trickle down my back.

Kai’s head lolled my way, as he shifted on the bench. He exhaled a dainty snore sending a puff of day-old breath straight into my face. I turned away, eyes watering, and stifled the urge to hit him. Kai was my oldest friend, and one hell of a fighter in a tough spot, but the damn fool could be careless as sin. Great Below, what kind of self-respecting criminal fell asleep mid-job? Especially as strange a job as this one was shaping up to be.

Our patron had ordered us to get arrested on this day and by this precinct. It was Kai’s bright idea to start the bar fight, and once that thought filled his empty head, he went at it like a raging bull. I ran a hand over my whiskers. At least no one had been injured. Well, permanently.

I felt a mirthless kind of smile hitch my lips as I looked past the dozen sleeping bodies of my fellow inmates, past the brown mudbrick walls etched with the Codes of Law up to the ceiling. There was no artificial light in the cell, for the obvious reasons that drunk criminals plus fire equals one big bloody mess. The only illumination came from a shaft of moonlight shining through a metal grate in the ceiling on the far end of the room.

Ostensibly it was there for ventilation, but the almost-summer air was so soupy breathing it in felt like drowning. While the air might have been a touch fresher beneath the grate, the laws of general assholery prevented anyone from sitting beneath it: namely that every few hours some jackal-cursed idiot up above would stop there to take a piss.

Through the grate’s metal bars, I could just make out the Great Spear shining mockingly in the sky. By the height of the constellation, I knew it was well after midnight. Which meant I’d been in this hole for seven fucking hours. I closed my eyes, letting my head thud against the wall, and cursed the patron in every language I knew.

It was his damn fault I was here wasting valuable time that could have been spent planning. Instead I was stuck in a jail cell, waiting for some legendary fixer. A woman who could kill the empress in front of the whole court and get away with it. A demon who could bend the nature of the world—if you were the kind of idiot who believed such talk.

And I wasn’t… Usually.

Urgh. It was almost insulting. My crew, the Talion, was young, but we were more than capable of stealing some old statue from the governor. Given the personal history we had with the rat, we probably would have done the job for free. Well. Most of us, anyway. But the patron had his own ideas, his own very specific time line, and this one annoying caveat: either the Queen of Days joined the crew, or the job was off.

I sneered as the words rattled around my skull. Queen of Days. The name practically screamed incompetence. And not the kind of incompetence that the real professionals rolled their eyes at and tolerated because, what’s one more kid playing in the sandbox to them? It’s the kind that gets a person knifed and tossed in the nearest canal.

Except…

Except that the stupid nickname aside, the woman got results. She single-handedly robbed the Sala Antiquities Museum three months ago. And last year she breached the Bastion to bust out four men. And the Bastion was in the middle of the godsdamned ocean, an island guarded by a fleet of patrol ships from both the water and the air. She’d have had to scale nearly seven hundred feet of sheer cliff to even reach the prison. And that was after the twenty-some-mile swim across open and unforgiving ocean.

She was good. Damn good. And her insistence that we meet in a jail cell could only mean she was connected to the codekeepers. Well connected too. But who was she? Where did she come from? No one knew.

When my family still ruled Cothis, there hadn’t been a single whisper about her. Five years later, I returned home to find people speaking of her in hushed, almost reverent tones. Lunacy.

But it was the kind of lunacy I could use. The kind that wouldn’t only get me out of this cell but secure the biggest score anyone in this cursed kingdom had ever heard of.

I opened my eyes, staring at the closed cell door, straining my ears for the sound of footsteps. According to the patron, the Queen of Days would be in these jails tonight. All I had to do was wait, and she would find me.

He’d been characteristically sketchy on the details—one of the many reasons my crew didn’t like working for him. But the way he’d arranged all this didn’t really matter to me. Afterall a payoff this big was worth the petty indignity of jumping through the old man’s hoops. Anyway, he probably had a codie or three on his payroll, too.

I shook my head mirthlessly. The Empress’s codekeepers were supposed to be righteous and true. As upright and just as the Codes of Law handed down to us poor mortals by the god Enkaara so many eons ago. Bullshit. Here in Cothis, many, many miles from the capital and the empress, the codekeepers were hardly better than any other street gang. Just better funded.

Still, I would have given anything to have a codie on the take. Anything to get out of this cell and into some dry clothes. The agony of staring at nothing but a closed door was making me itch. I stretched my neck from one side to the other, coaxing a few satisfied cracks from my spine. The pops were so loud, I almost missed the sound of the door shivering against its hinges.

I turned waiting to hear a key scrape against the lock.

Nothing.

“What the…”

I shook my head. I must be more tired than I—

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My thoughts collided with a wall of silence. A silence that crept out from the darkness beneath the door on a whisper of frigid air that scoured the cell. Impossible. Cothis was never cold. But goose bumps pimpled my skin. My heart beat too loud in my ears, as all sound retreated outside. And inside… Kai stopped snoring. The men around me went still. Not a single murmur. Not even a breath.

A metal tang electrified the air. There was something primal about it. Like the scent of spilled blood or rotting flesh. It was a smell that should have been identifiable. But what should have been careened face-first into the floor as the hairs on the back of my neck rose in mute horror. Because someone—something—was behind me.

Slowly, like dread had filled my joints with sand, I turned.

A figure stood at the far end of the cell. I couldn’t make out its—no, her—face, but I got the impression of a tall, slight woman. She leaned against the back wall, watching. Assessing. After a moment that stretched into hours, she straightened and stepped into the shaft of light.

Moonlight flashed against the planes of her silver mask. Black mesh screened the eyeholes, transforming her face into a floating silver skull. More black fabric covered her body, from her hood to the tips of her black leather boots. But it did nothing to soften her figure as she moved. Looking like a collection of sharp angles, she prowled forward, stepping silently around the sleeping men.

She stopped two precise feet from my knees, tilted her head to one side. “Balthazar Vadalen?”

All moisture evaporated from my tongue at the sibilant sound of my name on her lips. I nodded.

“You wish to obtain my services?”

I managed another nod, the small movement enough to shake words lose in my brain. “What did you do to them?”

It seemed to take her a moment to understand the question, for she paused before looking down at the people around her. Had she only just realized they were there? “They sleep.”

“Yes, but how?” My eyes narrowed when she failed to reply. “I need to know that my friend will be all right. Did you use some kind of gas?”

“Your friend is in no danger. He sleeps. When our business is concluded, he will wake.”

“Well that’s me comforted,” I grumbled, trying not to breathe too deeply lest whatever she used on the others start to affect me. And I was sure she’d used something. I was the only person sitting upright—everyone else was either slumped over, like Kai, or laying on the floor. I’d spent enough time with Zee to know that some gases crept low to the ground. Couldn’t remember why, but that wasn’t important.

I filed the thought—and the hope that Zee could re-create the compound from the traces on our clothes—for later. We were here for business after all. “So, here’s the deal, I need you to—”

She made a sharp cutting motion with one hand. “Not here. Come.” She turned away, gliding to the door.

I knew the door was locked. Great Below, I’d seen a half dozen men try to break it down, the others egging them on with equal parts hilarity and hope. But somehow I wasn’t surprised to see the handle yield beneath her gloved hand. The door slid open on silent hinges, like they obeyed this woman with bated breath and quiet terror.

She floated through the door, her presence tugging at me like I was no more than a dog on a leash. The indignity made me bridle, and I let it bloom into anger. I was tired and bored and not paying attention. She wasn’t a demon, just a clever woman who’d probably turned the sewer grate into a trapdoor. I’d assumed she had contacts in the Code Hall. Here was the proof.

I shook my head and pulled myself up, feeling more relaxed— more in control—than I had since I’d gotten arrested. But… the idea of leaving Kai behind still made me pause. If the meeting went south, I might need backup to get out of here. Then again, Kai’s idea of help wasn’t always that helpful, I thought, catching a whiff of my damp clothes. Silently promising to return, I smiled at my still-sleeping friend and walked out of the cell.

The guard station outside was a perfect circle of slimy gray stone with a half dozen closed doors studding its thick walls at even intervals. A rusted iron chandelier with three tiers of lit candles hung over a wide wooden table. Cards and food and half-empty tankards were abandoned on the table’s scarred surface. No guards, though. Only the woman.

An unaccountable desire to laugh welled up my throat, as she sat at the center of the table. For all that she was dressed like a burglar, she held herself with the dignified air of a noble. With folded hands she looked like she was waiting for a not particularly important meeting to begin. Shaking my head, I took the seat opposite hers.

Something akin to a companionable silence spread out between us, and in the light of the chandelier, I studied her mask. It was truly a masterpiece. Unlike the featureless oval of many a masquerade mask, this was precisely molded to glide over high cheekbones, a long, slightly upturned nose and angular jaw. The metal was etched with intricate scrollwork that accentuated the wide catlike eyes, and the mask’s full lips were painted in black lacquer. They tilted up at one corner in the slightest hint of a smile. But the impenetrable fabric hiding her eyes soured the tableau.

She brushed an invisible something from her sleeve and placed her gloved palms flat on the table. “So. Balthazar.”

“Please, call me Bal,” I said, leaning back in my chair, my stomach clenching as it’s uneven legs wobbled.

She inclined her head. “Bal. Why does the Talion require my services?”

I felt a muscle in my jaw tick. “To be honest, we don’t.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because my patron—the man who commissioned this job— insisted you join the crew.”

She didn’t speak for a long minute. “And why does your patron require my presence?”

It was the same question I’d asked before taking the job. The answer still made no sense. “He says that you’re to be the ‘weapon of last resort.’”

“Ah. I see.”

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I believed her. Something about the way she said it, the way her posture incrementally relaxed, made it clear that this answer made sense to her. Damn, did I want to ask her why, but the question would have to wait. My eyes swept the chamber, half sure that some codie would waltz in any second now. She might have them in her pocket, but I sure as hell didn’t. Time wasn’t on my side; I wasn’t going to let my ignorance be another advantage she could use.

“And your patron is sure this is the job he wishes to hire me for?”

“He was pretty damn sure,” I said, frowning. “Why?”

“There are several conditions to my employment. Two of them are that I will not work for the same person twice. Nor will I accept contracts lasting more than seven days.”

Suddenly the jumped-up name made sense. “So that’s where the title comes from? Queen of Days?”

“Partially. Yes.”

The stilted way she spoke reminded me of an old elocution tutor I once had. She’d been a stuck-up old broad who came from the corporal punishment school of education. It was a real effort not to roll my eyes. “Well, the time frame won’t be an issue. As for your other condition? The patron insisted on your presence, so I’m assuming he’s aware that this is his one shot to use you.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you sure that you require my presence?”

I rolled a few replies around in my mouth before settling on, “Yeah. I’m sure. That good enough for you?”

She graced me with a shallow nod. “What is the job?”

I sniffed. “In two days, the restoration of the Cothis temple will be complete,” I said, not bothering to hide my distaste.

Each island in the Kingdom of Ashaar had a temple dedicated to their city’s patron god. Every few generations, the old one was knocked down and a new one was built in its place, supposedly in veneration of the god’s glory. Nonsense, really. It was just a way to employ the faceless masses, keep them off the streets and overworked so they didn’t have time to dream of better lives.

“During the opening ceremony, Governor Paasch will consecrate a new idol to the god Karanis. We’ve been hired to steal the idol during the ceremony, but before it’s consecrated.”

Her back straightened vertebrae by vertebrae before stilling completely. It was the kind of readiness that hummed. Like she was the human equivalent of a wire slipped over an unguarded throat.

I smirked, enjoying the feeling of her surprise, and flashed my most feral smile. The plan was as daring as it got, not that my crew couldn’t handle the challenge. And if I was being honest, the brazenness was part of the allure. Governor Paasch had ruined our lives. He deserved what was coming.

“Who set the terms for this job?” she asked, her voice rough. “You? Or your patron?”

I frowned, thinking it was obvious: the man who paid me. “My patron.”

“Why? Why steal the idol during the ceremony? Why not before?”

The front two legs of my chair hit the floor with a thud. It wasn’t like these weren’t good questions. They were the exact ones I’d asked. But the way she was asking them, the intensity with which her voice echoed off the room’s rounded walls, put me on edge.

“According to my patron, the idol won’t be finished until right before the consecration. Would it be easier to steal beforehand, yes. But he’s not interested in an unfinished idol. He wants the real deal. And he doesn’t want to wait until after the ceremony.”

“Does it not seem unnecessarily dangerous?”

Of course it was dangerous. Crazy dangerous. And yeah, I’d have rather waited until after the ceremony, but, “He’s not paying us for easy.”

“I wish to meet him.”

I exhaled a hard laugh. “He thought you might.”

“And?”

“He said you can come with me to deliver the idol after the ceremony. He won’t meet you before.”

“I see.”

“Clearly,” I grumbled. “So, are you joining us?”

She sighed, though the mask muffled the sound, transforming it into the papery rustle of moths in flight. She clasped her hands, elbows braced on the table. Her pointer fingers were pressed against her black lips. “I shall.”

“Good. We’ll cut you in on the take. Five percent for three days of work sound good?” I smiled innocently, ready for the outraged exclamation that would surely follow this measly offer.

“I do not require money.”

I felt my brows rise. “Then what do you require?”

“Tell me the names of your companions.”

“It’s a small crew,” I began, rolling with the change of subject

even though it made me want to hit something. I had a feeling nothing would be easy with this woman and a spiteful part of me wanted to refuse. The money, Bal. Just think of the money. “You saw my man Kai in the cell,” I said, nodding toward the open door.

“Kai? Ah, no. What are their full names?”

“Malakai Fanoak, though you’ll call him Kai unless you want to start a fight.”

She nodded once. “Who else?”

“Zeelaya Agodzi; she’s my cousin, and her husband Edik Agodzi.” When she didn’t speak, I bared my teeth in a small smile. “That’s it. Like I said, it’s a small crew.”

She watched me for several long moments, saying nothing. Eventually her hands parted in a small impatient gesture. “And. Who else?”

“I told you—”

My words banked as the candles in the chandelier waned. Water pebbled and dripped from the ceiling. Dragged out of earth and stone like the slow breaking of a dam. Tiny teardrops plinked on the table between us as if they were the steady thrum of a clock running out. The walls around me seemed to constrict, squeezing. Squeezing.

She knew. She knew about Mira.

Impossible. She wasn’t really part of the crew. I never let her do anything riskier than open doors or be a lookout. Never anything dangerous. She wasn’t part of the crew. My vision flickered, as an invisible finger scraped the inside of my skull.

What the hell was happening to me?

“Who. Else.”

My lips twitched, moving of their own accord, ready to surrender the name of the one person in this world I’d give anything to protect. I bit down hard, tasting blood in my mouth.

Had the patron told her about Mira? That old bastard—he knew I did everything I could to keep her on the sidelines. Anger raced up my spine, and for one wild moment, I almost walked back into the cell and closed the door behind me.

Then I remembered the payday. Remembered all the good that money could do; the life I could give Mira if we succeeded. But only if the Queen of Days joined the crew. Only if we actually pulled this off.

Through gritted teeth I said, “Miraveena Vadalen.”

“Your wife?”

“My sister,” I spat. “And if you think you deserve one cent of her cut, you’re crazier than you look.”

“I told you; I do not want your money.”

I smacked my hand to the table, glorying in the pain that danced up my arm. “Then what do you want?”

“Time.”

I blinked. “You want time?”

“Yes. A month, to be exact.”

“You want a month of our time? And what do you expect us to do in that month?”

“Ah. You misunderstand. I do not mean that I want a month of your service. I want a month of your life. Thirty days you would have lived, which you will now surrender to me.”

The Queen of Days demands thirty days. It was like the first draft of a shitty nursery rhyme, I thought with a slight laugh. “You’re joking.”

She had to be joking. But she wasn’t. She was utterly, deadly serious.

“If you agree to work with me, you agree to die thirty days sooner than Creation intended.”

She was insane. Utterly cracked. No one could just lop off a month of a person’s life. She was no better than some dockside oracle claiming to read the future from a line on my hand and the gold in my pocket. I shook my head, struggling to dislodge a sense of total disbelief. What was she? Why would the patron insist on her participation? It was…

A good deal.

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No wonder she had a reputation for doing crazy, impossible things. She was impossibly crazy, so risking her life was obviously no great hardship. It almost wasn’t fair, negotiating with a deranged person. But Cothis wasn’t built on fairness. If all she wanted was an impossible-to-keep promise, the more money for the rest of the crew.

For Mira.

Wasn’t an empty promise worth the life I could give my sister? My family?

I shrugged. “All right. Fine. A month of my life.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I think there has been another misunderstanding. Apologies. Ashaarite is not my native tongue, and I find it both cumbersome and imprecise. It is not only thirty days of your life which I require, but Kai’s, Zeelaya’s, Edik’s and Miraveena’s as well.”

“Not Mira.” The words sprang from my lips, splattering desperation on the walls. Hatred rushed through me, twisting and churning. This—this thing—wasn’t getting anywhere near my little sister.

She studied me quietly for some moments longer. “All right. Would you like to take on her debt, or prorate it among the rest of your companions?”

“I’ll take it,” I said without hesitation.

“Very well.” She extended a gloved hand. “Are we agreed?”

I stared at her hand. Surely she couldn’t mean for me to…

“I have to agree now? For all of them?”

“Yes. You are the leader of the Talion, after all. And my terms are, in my own opinion, rather unusual. No doubt they will be happy to acquiesce to our agreement if it means more money for them in the end.”

“No doubt.” I sneered as I said the words. The woman didn’t know the first thing about my crew. I might lead them, but I didn’t make decisions for them. Or… I didn’t used to.

Until this job.

Edik and Zee were still pissed I’d taken it without talking to them first—and for keeping the patron’s identity a secret. Kai was too, if I was being honest. He just didn’t want to admit to being angry with me. But Edik was convinced that this job was dead reckless. And when he and Zee found out who the patron really was?

Shit.

The woman before me wasn’t the only one who wanted to have a few words with the old man. He had a knack for sending us into the worst kind of danger, which was exactly why I didn’t tell anyone he was involved.

I looked past her still-outstretched hand, struggling to find some kind of purchase. But all I saw was the plain stone walls of a jail cell.

“Will the codekeepers be helping us?” I asked, the idea hitting me with sudden hope. “Can you at least make sure they look the other way?”

If she could ensure their cooperation, or at the very least, their indifference, it would go a long way with my crew.

She paused, seeming to consider my question. “No,” she said finally, shattering all hope. “Not unless you wish to sacrifice more time.”

“Look, Catsuit, I can’t sacrifice their time as it is.”

“Ah. I see.” Her hand dropped. “Then our business is concluded.”

She rose, and the light seemed to dim with her. The light and my future.

Mira’s future.

If this woman left, so did the job. The payday. Any chance I had at getting Mira into a good school and getting her a home—not just a ratty ship cabin, but a real home—would be gone.

The ghosts of my parents’ voices slid through my mind. Their final desperate words begging me to take care of her. Of all of them.

“Wait.” My voice was soft, cracking with my resolve. But it was enough to make this demon of a woman pause.

And turn back to me.

Get your shit together, Bal. There’s no such thing as demons. Or magic. Just crazy-ass women in costumes.

“Fine. I’ll do it. I agree to your terms.”

When her hand rose again, I didn’t hesitate. I took it, grimacing, as a mosquito bit the back of my neck like a bad omen of things to come. “So what should I call you? Your Majesty Queen of Days?”

I felt her body shake through the shared link of our joined hands, and realized she was laughing. “Tassiel.”

“Tassiel?” The name rang against something in the deep recesses of my mind.

“Or Tass,” she said, “as you seem to prefer diminutives.”

“Tass it is,” I replied, though my preferences clearly counted for shit today.

About the Author

Greta K. Kelly is (probably) not a witch, death or otherwise, but she can still be summoned with offerings of too-beautiful-to-use journals and Butterfingers candy. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Warrior Witch Duology and The Queen of Days. Her writing has also appeared in Gizmodo, i09, Writers Digest and Nerd Daily. Greta currently lives in Wisconsin with her husband EJ, daughters Lorelei and Nadia who are doing their level-best to take over the world.

You can find The Queen of Days on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and anywhere else you buy books.

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Chapter 1

The wind came from a land called, in happier times, Vastium. Now that name lived only in history books, replaced with The Wastes, and the wind borne from this broken and blasted land bore the mark of its mother. Hot and acrid it was, bitter and quick. The wind flew over the landscape, past cities turned lost necropolises and verdant fields now dusty basins. It witnessed with equal disdain scrapshacks with chimneys smoking, abandoned manors buried under blankets of dust, and factory complexes that had in gilded times been modern and grand, but now lay crumbled and utterly forgotten. It flew past the pits of mudlions and the dens of wastehounds, though the camps of mutants and the unruly taur herds of desperate ranchers. As it flew kilometre past kilometre, the hate that pressed it on wavered, along with its strength, its fury bursting over shattered bunkers and buried shrines to fetid things. It grew weaker and weaker, as the land around it began to resemble something not exactly civilized, but vaguely adjacent to an analogy of civilization. Half-paved roads and rusty bridges, towns made of scrapmetal and refurbished ruins. It descended into one of these towns, down its narrow dirt streets, taking the dust of the place with it, on this last leg of its journey. It flew and faded, from gale to wind to breeze, until, with its last strength, it sputtered through the opened door of the Troll’s Heart Bar and Tavern, and into the face of one Marcel Talwar.

* * *

Achoo!

The bald man with the beard looked up over his cards to stare at Marcel. The sneeze had been far too dainty for a hardened raider, which, despite his rough clothes and put-on accent, Marcel wasn’t. Marcel was a vigilante, self-declared, and before that a private detective, once a soldier, war hero really, and way back when, a mediocre medical student with a wanderlust born from an upper-middle-class ennui. But it was very, very, important that Marcel maintain his lie, pretend to be the Martin Bonecrack that he introduced himself as, so he transitioned his dainty sneeze into a deep, baritone bout of coughing.

“Damn wastelung,” he growled, picking up his cracked glass of whiskey and sipping. He glanced at his hand of cards. A two, a five, and duke of swords, a two of petals, and a jester of gears. Not great, but not horrible. “I’ll raise an aurem,” he said, tossing the coin onto the table.

“Match,” said the bald man with an eyepatch. This was a different bald man than the one with the beard, who was a different man than the bald man with the tattoo of a naked woman fighting a needlecat on his face. Three bald men at one table. This would not be a problem in it of itself, Marcel bore no antipathy for hair-deprived folk, the only issue was that the man he was hunting, one Felik Rector, had been described by a well-bribed local as “that bald bloke who’s been hanging ‘round The Troll’s Heart.”  

The other two bald men matched the bet, and Beard revealed the next card. A mistress of swords. As Tattoo scrunched his forehead and the needlecat on it in thought, Marcel took the moment to glance around the room. The bar was a shabby thing, well in line with a wastetown such as this, all scarwood and scrapmetal sheets. A steel-armed barwoman stood beside a broken mirror and wall of bottles, all too sun-worn and dust-covered for their labels to be read. A man played a jaunty tune on the keyboard of a calliope, steam bursting out from pipes in the instrument’s back. These pipes interwove with others that cut in from the floor in a sort of messy trellis up the wall and into the rooms upstairs.

Their table was not the only one occupied, though it was far from a busy afternoon. A table over a principate soldier was napping, face in a puddle of his own beer, blue cap soaked. The man sat as a reminder to Marcel that he was in the den of his enemy, though so far the Principate soldiers that occupied this nowhere town had not made themselves a problem. In the back corner sat the final customer, Marcel’s co-vigilante, Kayip. The large monk, also bald, hid his features under a heavy hood, the glint of his featureless half-mask barely visible in the dim.

“I fold,” Tattoo said, as Beard stared at Kayip with some suspicion. Marcel had to admit, in retrospect, that a heavy hooded cloak was actually a fairly conspicuous look on a hot summer’s day.

“I raise five aurem,” Marcel said, to turn attention back. It’s not like it mattered much if he won this hand. Eyepatch turned to stare at him, and then studied his cards.

“So,” Marcel said. “What business you folks in?”

“Trade,” Beard said simply.

“Murder,” Eyepatch said, with a tone that made it unclear if the man was joking.

Tattoo merely grunted and waved over the barkeep for another drink.

Marcel scratched at the cogleg beneath his trouser, phantom pain bothering him as it was wont to. Eyepatch matched the bet.

“I’ve been looking for new work,” Marcel said. “Heard there’s some bigwig stiffland businessman making noise out here.”

Tattoo snorted and shrugged. The calliope-man started a new, off-tempo ditty.

“Name is…” Marcel said. “Well, Demiurge-be-damned, name slips from my tongue like a brasshare off a mucktoad’s back. Lazamis or something?”

“Oh Lazarus Roache?” said Eyepatch. Marcel tried not to react strongly to the name but nodded as if, yeah, that could be it. “Supposed to be on a mad buying spree, grabbing what he can from every slaver, and even buying manmeat off palewhat plantations, if they have any spare. Haven’t seen anything like it in my years.”

“Can we… not discuss the slaver’s trade now,” Beard said, shooting his eyes towards the drunk Principate soldier.

“Oh, those imperials won’t bother us none,” Eyepatch said. “Was a slaver myself, back when I was young and reckless. Heck, used to hire Domitus here,” and he pointed to the tattooed man, who grunted, “as muscle.”

“But not anymore?” Marcel asked. “’Cause I’ve been meaning to make some inroads, a little networking, if you will.”

Eyepatch shook his head. “It’s a damn political trade now, you work with the Crimson Eyes, suddenly you piss off the Iron Strixes, sell to the Fist-Biters, and then you have Trog-Skinners on your back.”

“What about you?” Marcel said, throwing in another aurem coin to the growing pile in the center. “You said you’re a trader.”

“Mechanical equipment,” Beard said, a bit too quick. “Ya know, engineer stuff.”

“Hmm… I happen to know a few exiled Icarian gearheads,” Marcel said, which, exempting the plurality, wasn’t actually a lie. In fact, the engineer was just a floor beneath them, waiting for the signal to strike. He thought on some of her esoteric ramblings. “Do you sell ætheric inverters, by chance?”

The man nodded, matching the bet. “Sure, sure, mate. Not on me at the moment.”

“How about…” Marcel threw some random technical sounds together in his head. “Sangleum reoxidating prelighters?”

“Have in the past,” Beard said. “But caravan’s empty.”

That settled it for Marcel. Between Beard’s twitchiness at the slaver talk and the holes in the man’s knowledge, he was certain enough that Mr. Beard was, in fact, Felik Rector. He faked a stretch and kicked his boot out, just far enough to knock a well-placed coin into a hole between the floorboards.

* * *

Down below in the steam-filled basement of the bar Sylvaine Pelletier was struggling to get the moisture out of her fur. Hair, damn it, hair! For over twenty years the young woman had been trying to purge from herself all the bestial slurs and insults her childhood bullies had drilled into her. Unfortunately, those children hadn’t been alone; it seemed all of society had been bent on reminding her of her fur, and her ears, and her claws, and her razor-sharp teeth. Even the oh-so-enlightened United Confederacy of the Citizens’ Resurgence had treated her with little more than bemused and begrudging tolerance, keen to subtly remind her, in too many ways to count, that no matter what she did, who she tried to become, she’d always be a Ferral, a beastwoman.

She shook her head, droplets of steam and sweat flying, and stared down at her glove. An ætherglove it was, the tool of an engineer, and she, the first Ferral engineer in recorded history. She’d almost be happy about that, if the cost of this position hadn’t been binding her will to the machinations of one Lazarus Roache.

With a sigh, she did her best to banish these thoughts and continued to grope around in the disorganized guts of the small turbine room. The bar, it seemed, had been built on a pre-Calamity powerplant, and was still providing æthericity to half the town. Poorly, by Sylvaine’s estimate, whoever had done the repairs had done a hack job, rusted pipes jutting in random directions, steam leaking from every coupling. It was a fetid steam too. She didn’t want to guess where they were getting the water, but it smelled tainted with sangleum and sewage. Gear’s-grits she was desperate to get out of here.

A clink and a clang. A coin bounced off pipes and metal casings and landed in a puddle near Sylvaine’s boots. She bent down and squinted in the dim. It was a frasc, a UCCR coin, Marcel’s signal that he was ready above.

Sylvaine closed her eyes and raised her glove. The task was simple. Overload the turbine and send a burst of steam upwards. It should provide just enough a distraction for Marcel and Kayip to apprehend Felik. With Kayip’s autotruck parked in the back of the bar, it would be an easy escape out of this troglyn’s armpit of a town. But that all depended on Sylvaine being able to precisely overload the turbine.

She sucked in her breath. It had been days since she had last tried some æthermantics, tried to manipulate the mechanical æthers to alter machines from a distance. It was the signature skill of engineers, a skill denied to Ferrals, but given to her by Roache’s miracle drug/mind-enslaving narcotic, slickdust.

Come on, this is easy. You’re in control. Sylvaine told herself. She let the power flow through her, first a trickle, then more. It moved through her blood, down veins and up arteries, round and round, energy pooling at the edge of her glove. It came surprisingly easy, intense but tame, and she focused it onto the machine, envisioning the required results, trying to manipulate the metal and machinery into her desired permutation. It was working, it was actually working! Stable and in control, she was the engineer she pretended to be, not just some failed bestial experiment by Lazarus—

The power erupted suddenly, violent and molten through her blood. The fine spark of æthericity became a thunderclap, and the machine she was manipulating burst in a sudden fury. She opened her eyes to see a wall of steam rushing towards her.

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* * *

“Just a pair of dukes,” Marcel said, tossing his cards down right as the floor burst. He fell from his chair as men shouted and screamed, the calliope exploding on a high note, knocking the musician down as the entire room stormed with steam.

“Kayip now!” Marcel shouted, too stunned to stop himself from using the monk’s name.

He heard a scream through the sudden fog, as the monk charged somewhere. Sounds of fighting, grunts and punches. A man in blue rushed into view.

“Attacsh, attacsh!” the drunk principate soldier shouted. “Resurrrgence bomb, terrororists, getss the police!”

As the drunk stumbled out towards the door, a bottle was swung at Marcel’s head. He dodged the blow and responded with a gut punch. The assailant groaned and fell to the ground, staring up dazed at Marcel with one eye, the other lost behind an eyepatch.

“I have him!” Kayip shouted, as Marcel staggered forward. There was indeed a bald man in the monk’s hands, his face half-obscured by Kayip’s azure bracelet, and on that very confused face Marcel could see a bloodied tattoo of a naked woman and a needlecat.

“Not our guy!” Marcel yelled, as Felik’s footsteps rang out from the top of the stairwell. Rushing up the other direction, Sylvaine stumbled, panting, fur covered in wet soot, canine-like nose sopping.

“I’m sorry,” the Ferral engineer said. “I just, I was almost, I didn’t mean—”

“Upstairs!” Marcel shouted, running past her. Kayip dropped the tattooed man and followed.

A gunshot brought Marcel to a halt at the top of the stairs. He hid behind the bend as Felik fired off two more rounds.

“Are you hit?” Sylvaine asked as she caught up.

“I’m good,” Marcel said, pulling out a hand mirror from his pocket to glance round the corner. A trick he had learned during his time as a Resurgence scout. “Listen, Rector, we know you’ve been in contact with Lazarus Roache, just come with us and we can talk this all out peacefully.”

Four more gunshots was the man’s response. The fifth clinked empty. Felik cursed and dashed into a side room.

The trio rushed out, only for Felik to slam the door shut and locked it tight behind him. Marcel kicked the wood in fruitless frustration. Felik was the first and only good lead to that tycoon bastard who had brought ruin to Huile. Without him, they might be forced to wander the Wastes for another month blind, all the while Roache plotted whatever horrific revenge he had in store for Marcel’s home. They couldn’t afford to let the man slip.

Kayip began to mutter a prayer in his strange Church-tongue, rubbing his bracelet, but Sylvaine stepped forward.

“No, I can do this.”

The Ferral woman closed her eyes and put out her glove. Marcel thought he could hear her whisper something to herself. A flash, barely visible, and the door clicked open.

Kayip did not wait but burst through. Felik was on the other end of the bedroom, struggling to get the window open. He aimed his empty pistol and clinked off two impotent nothings. The monk screamed and charged forward, into Felik and then beyond, past glass and rotting wood, out the side of the inn.

“Gear’s-grits, Kayip!” Sylvaine said, as she rushed forward, Marcel running after her. She made the jump with ease, down to the alley below, landing beside the trash heap where Kayip and Felik had fallen. Felik had stumbled away and was grabbing for any piece of metal he could use as a weapon.

As for Marcel, the drop looked rather precarious for someone with a brass limb. He reached over to a gutter-pipe half-a-metre away, and started to straddle down, centimetre by centimetre. It was slow going, his cogleg strong, but not quite a lithe as one made of flesh. Using windowpanes and jutting bits of wood he managed to ease himself down the side of the building, just as Sylvaine and Kayip had corned Rector, who was waving about a rusted shower curtain as a desperate spear.

Marcel pulled out his Frasco six-shooter, a relic from his soldiering days, and aimed languidly in Felik’s direction.

“Okay, give it up Rector. It’s over,” he said.

Felik nodded, a grim look on his face. “’Suppose it is. For the four of us.”

“Freeze in the name of the Imperator!” came the shout from behind. Marcel turned to find half a squad of Principate military police, rifles aimed, bayonets glinted in the evening sun.

Just a minute more, and they would have been driving out of here.

“Well, shit,” Marcel said, dropping his pistol to the dusty road.

About the Author

Noah Lemelson is a sci-fi, fantasy, and “insert-modifier-here”-punk fiction writer, teacher, and writing instructor based in Los Angeles. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts in 2019, and before that got his B.A. in Biology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of two dieselpunk novels. His debut, The Sightless City, was released in 2019 by Tiny Fox Press, and earned First Place Award in the 2019 OMZA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction, as well as positive reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers weekly. Its sequel, The Lioness and The Rat Queen was released in 2023. He also has numerous short stories published in online magazines such as Planet Scumm, Allegory, and The Los Suelos Anthology. 

You can find Lemelson’s Slick Dust Trilogy at Tinyfox.com, Amazon, or at his website: Noahlemelson.com

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Just a quick little note on what’s coming from the Swordfights & Spaceflights crew in the coming weeks.

Several of us have released books in the last half of the year or so and would like to share some samples with y’all!

We’ll have book previews from authors Noah Lemelson, Greta Kelly, MJ Kuhn, and me until the end of the year. Noah will be the first contributor to this planned book preview series .

After that, we’ll be inviting our other contributors to post book previews every month. It is my hope that we will also have other content as well… But as the authors of this amazing collaborative newsletter are increasingly busy trying to, well, write new books, it is only a hope that we will return to a bi-monthly newsletter in 2024. If anything, we may collectively decide to do something bi-monthly every other month just to keep our sanity and your interest piqued.

We may also continue to have surprise posts about bits like A Little Light Reading and Want a Little More Romance? as we share this space with other Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, and Fantasy authors and editors.

Can’t wait for you to read the new book preview series! We’re super excited to see, and share, what comes with the new year!

But somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, I found myself gravitating toward science fiction and (especially) fantasy. I still read pretty widely, and I still loved the structure of a mystery (Agatha Christie was a favorite at the time, though I never really got into Arthur Conan Doyle), but this was the age when I became hungry for speculative fiction above all else. Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series, Robin McKinley’s fairy tale retellings, the Chronicles of Narnia, T.A. Barron’s Merlin Saga… these were the books that did more than keep me occupied: they soothed my soul in ways that I couldn’t articulate at the time and am only learning to identify now.

Above all the series I read at that age, one stands above the rest. A series so powerful it resonated through my life in ways I’m only just starting to become aware of. So cathartic that even now, as an adult, I ugly-cried all through pretty much the entire last season of its television adaptation. A series that seems to me to hold magic in its words to this day, and that remains a signpost to me on the ways speculative fiction can access truths that are buried so deeply we need metaphor to get at them.

This series is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

I remember when the third book in this series came out. I was a month shy of my thirteenth birthday, essentially the same age as the protagonists of the series. Some of my strongest memories of that age are of reading that book. I remember feeling alive, awake in a way I never had before. Like the words had stirred something loose in me, an awareness so sharp it cuts all the way to the present day.

So what is it about this series that encapsulates the magic of speculative fiction? I’ve spent the better part of two decades wondering the same thing. I think I’m starting to have an idea.

(spoilers ahead for His Dark Materials)

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The daemons

One of the fantasy elements of His Dark Materials is that everyone has a daemon—a physical manifestation of the person’s inner self. Before puberty, a person’s daemon can shape-shift into any kind of animal, but once the child becomes an adult—and presumably settles into some sort of stable adult identity—the daemon settles on a permanent form. While Lyra—the central protagonist—can be impulsive and hot-headed, but through her daemon Pantalaimon (Pan), we see her deep compassion and loyalty. This is one way that daemons provide a depth and maturity to the story. Without saying how Lyra’s upbringing was traumatic to her—she was raised by the scholars at Oxford, left there by a man she believes to be her uncle, but later learns is her father—we can see in how she interacts with Pan that she wrestles with trust and acceptance.

The daemons are often a useful shorthand for personality or lifestyle. They can explain a lot about a new character introduced—provided that character is an adult whose daemon has settled into a permanent form—without many words. This is a construct so simple, and could be just employed as a useful writing trick. But Pullman doesn’t just use it as a cheap shorthand—the way he writes the relationship between one the story’s chief antagonists—Mrs. Coulter—and her daemon is nothing short of brilliant.

Mrs. Coulter enters the story when she invites Lyra to become her assistant. She is an academic, studying why a mysterious quantity called Dust—visible only using special cameras—seems to gather only on adults, but not children. The theory espoused by the Magisterium—the political and religious authority for whom Mrs. Coulter works—believes Dust is evidence of original sin, and it’s Mrs. Coulter’s cruel experiments that leads them to discover that by separating a child from their daemon, the settling of dust that occurs at puberty can be prevented. This nearly always results in the death of the child, or at the very least, the loss of their mind. (But more on Dust shortly). It would be easy to see Mrs. Coulter as a one-dimensional villain—cruel beyond all belief—but what makes her fascinating is her daemon.

Like Mrs. Coulter, her unnamed daemon is beautiful, cunning, and charming. A golden monkey, he inspires awe and fear in those who see him—and his cruelty is evident before hers becomes obvious. He never speaks, which is rare for daemons, and he and Mrs. Coulter can be farther from each other than is considered natural. This separation is at first a curiosity, and something that makes Mrs. Coulter fascinating and powerful. But eventually, it starts to become clear that there is more to this than parlor tricks. While Lyra and Pan have a playful though sometimes combative relationship built on mutual respect, Mrs. Coulter and her daemon almost seem like two enemies hitched to the same revenge plot. They have to deal with each other, but the experience is as painful for them as it is for the people who cross them. And this nuance is brought to life devastatingly by Ruth Wilson in the TV adaptation.

We see in the daemons the complex relationships that people have with each other. It states clearer than words that sometimes a villain’s greatest foe is her own inner self.

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Dust

One of the first rules of writing for an age group is that your characters—at least the ones the readers are meant to identify with—are the same age as your audience. And so it is that Lyra and the other central protagonist, Will, are somewhere in the 11-14 range throughout these books. It just so happens that these are the final years before Dust settles on humans—and before daemons settle into a permanent form.

Depending on who you ask in the books, Dust is Original Sin made manifest, or it’s the wisdom of age, or it’s evidence of consciousness. It’s an invisible element that makes sentient life possible—that is, itself, sentient life. And the transition from a child who is mostly ignored by Dust to an adult who attracts it is a central theme of the story.

These many definitions bring out the bittersweet transition to adulthood that happens at this age in the main characters and the readers. Dust is a thing that comes with first love. It’s also a thing that comes with the disillusionment of discovering all the ways justice is not served and mercy is scarce in the world. It’s the power of wisdom and independence, and it’s the discovery that magic isn’t real and all your heroes are just sad, mortal humans who make mistakes just like you.

Lyra and Will are at this point of discovery. It’s not that their lives were joyous and blissful before this awareness, but rather that the lessons they learn in their journeys are bittersweet and imperfect. And if this isn’t those painful, beautiful pre-pubescent years, I don’t know what is. At that age, you become aware of everything you could be. And everything you could lose. You’re not yet grown, not yet touched by those qualities that make you grown. But you begin to perceive them.

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Death and Goodbyes

Years don’t just accumulate, they accelerate. I remember at this age starting to feel like time no longer languished, it burbled past, heading toward a rushing, crashing falls. And it’s a one-way stream—the current is too strong to push backward.

The awareness of death, true awareness, is part of becoming fully conscious. And Lyra and Will have to face death in a literal sense. In the third book, The Amber Spyglass, they venture into the land of the dead itself. As part of this journey, they must leave their daemons behind. After all, what is death but the separation of soul and body?

I remember this separation in the books. I remember it feeling as immediate in my own body as it was to Lyra, and especially to Pan, her daemon who was such a perfect window into the soft interior of this spunky, fiery young girl. This journey changes Lyra and Will both, and it changes their daemons. It is not even the last step on the road to Dust, but it is an essential one. When they are reunited with their daemons, something is changed between them. They are still close, but there is a new edge to the relationship: an awareness of the fragility of their connection, but also of the strength that is the opposite side of that coin.

And that experience of death is not the last goodbye in the books. The final chapters are a series of partings, truly permanent ones that are heartbreaking in every possible way, and yet the story ends with hope. Because life is a series of goodbyes, but those partings are never the end. The people we leave behind—or who leave us behind—leave a piece of themselves with us.

Speculative Fiction is a Lens

Like the Amber Spyglass itself, it reveals to us the things we can’t see if we look directly at them. By sidestepping the direct in favor of symbols and metaphor, it captures those parts of reality that defy categorization. Like the journey from childhood to adulthood, and the bittersweet pain of discovering the gray areas. There’s a power in the written word and it’s amplified in those most vulnerable years. I’m sure the argument can be made for many genres, but for me, it was the very magic of fantasy (or technology of science fiction) that gave me the expansiveness I needed to encompass these experiences. It still does that to this day.

If there is one character in His Dark Materials who seems to be a signpost that growing up isn’t all bad, that having our daemon “settle” doesn’t mean we have to be set in our ways, it’s Dr. Mary Malone. A nun-turned-quantum-physicist who ventures out across the multiverse on a quest led only by the I Ching and her own curiosity, she is to my mind the moral heart of the story, or at least the interpreter of the moral heart. Mary is a model of resilience, of compassion, and of hope. I’ll leave you with her words:

“I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.”

Announcements

If you, too, loved middle grade speculative fiction, my newest book comes out today from Chooseco. Share the power of speculative fiction with a middle-grade reader in your life. Or enjoy it for yourself!

Buy Sister from the Multiverse here

“I felt honored that a member of the Franklin family approached me for this project, and then delighted by how many authors trusted me with their wonderful work.” – Editor Bogi Takács

Swordfights & Spaceflights is also delighted to share this anthology of amazing work!

About the Anthology

Physical chemist Rosalind Franklin was one of the discoverers of DNA and an innovator of virology — yet despite her groundbreaking research, her contributions were often erased. In her memory, Rosalind’s Siblings collects over twenty original speculative fiction stories and poems, all focusing on scientists marginalized due to their gender. Edited by Hugo and Lambda award winner Bogi Takács, and featuring both established and newer authors from all around the world, the pieces in this anthology take you across time and space while exploring the role of scientists in society.

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Authors and Stories Included in Rosalind’s Siblings Anthology

Lisa M. Bradley “Collecting Ynés”

Polenth Blake “Rewilding Nova”

Stefani Cox “Render Raze Revise”

Julie Nováková “Cavern of Dreams”

D.A. Xiaolin Spires “The Vanishing of Ultratatts”

Lydia Moon “The Starship Ariel”

Leigh Harlen “Singing Goblin Songs”

Celia Neri “The Tightrope Walker”

Ursula Whitcher “Circle Packing”

Premee Mohamed “If Strange Things Happen Where She Is”

Emma Johnson “Animal Behavior”

Santiago Belluco “The Elusive Plague”

Julian K. Jarboe “The Android That Designed Itself”

Phoebe Barton “To Keep the Way”

Jennifer Lee Rossman “Blood and Iron”

Kanika Agrawal “Possible Discontinuity and Unusual Secondary Structure of Okazaki and Okazaki”

Laura Jane Swanson “Leech Clinic”

Osahon Ize-Iyamu “Great Things Of Which To Speak Of”

Vajra Chandrasekera “The Bull of the Moon Holds His Horns to Time’s Grindstone; or, Cybernetineti in Ur”

Cameron Van Sant “LDR”

Tessa Fisher “Morning Star Blues”

Hal Y. Zhang “The Astronomer Aspiring”

Isha Karki “The Ocean Sings to You”

Buy from the publisher!

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About the Editor

Bogi Takács (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) is a Hungarian Jewish author, editor, critic and scholar who's an immigrant to the US. Bogi has won the Lambda and Hugo awards, and has been a finalist for other awards like the Ignyte and Locus awards. E edited three volumes of Transcendent: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction. Eir debut poetry collection Algorithmic Shapeshifting and eir debut short story collection The Trans Space Octopus Congregation were both released in 2019, and eir second collection Power to Yield and Other Stories is coming in late 2023. You can find Bogi talking about books at https://www.bogireadstheworld.com, and on various social media as bogiperson.

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About the Press

Atthis Arts is a small, indie press out of Detroit Michigan who honors the author’s authentic voice as the core of their projects, strives for thoughtfulness in writing and publishing, and loves to connect with their community of readers. Atthis Arts has won Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Awards in three separate categories: Fiction: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Graphic Novel, and Best New Voice: Fiction. The press is led by E.D.E. Bell, 2022 Editor Guest of Honour for The Conference on Canadian Content in Speculative Arts and Literature (Can*Con), co-lead for Gen Con Writers’ Symposium programming, and award-winning quiet fantasy author.

Other Projects

Check out the Kickstarter Campaign for…

Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora, edited by Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, and Iryna Pasko

Check out the Kickstarter Campaign

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Announcements

Buy now from Amazon!

Since I typically write space opera and military science fiction, my scenes often take place centuries in the future, but I have advice that can apply to a variety of genres across the spectrum of speculative fiction. But whether you’re a writer, reader, or critic, these considerations could be a helpful way for you to analyze and break down a battle scene.

Just use the acronym SNEAK!

Start your battle scene like any other scene.

I like to use a few basic ingredients to start with: give us a setting and then drop in some characters.

 Descriptions will come in handy here, especially sensory details to root the reader. Giving your scene at least two characters can make things dynamic and tense, especially if these characters are in conflict.

At least one of your characters should want something, even if it’s only a glass of water. In other words, give your characters goals. Watching your characters try (and fail and try again) to realize their goals makes the scene compelling. Make sure that the goals as well as the obstacles are made clear to the reader. We should have a sense of what the stakes are, and they should be more consequential than merely ‘winning the battle,’ whatever that victory might look like.  

There could be more than one goal, or minor goals along the way in the service of a long-term goal (IE fixing a damaged component on a spaceship while the battle is happening). The complications are there to guarantee that your characters struggle, because a story isn’t as compelling if there aren’t challenges. They can be internal like the main character struggling with a personal crisis or external like a fleet of enemy ships, but this is no time to be nice to your characters! Diamonds are made under pressure.

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Narrative distance should be changed up.

Generally, the more global your perspective, the less attached we feel to characters. Limited third person perspective is very common in contemporary storytelling, and personally I feel much more invested in a character when I’m looking right over the shoulder or through their eyes. I feel an emotional attachment when I know what a character is feeling. Don’t lose that human connection in a big battle.

There may be times when you’ll want to pull the ‘camera’ back and give us a broader sense of the battle’s progress. There are all sorts of gimmicks and plot devices available to speculative fiction authors to reorient the reader no matter how epic the fight becomes. Characters can receive live updates during battle via telepathy or advanced communications devices for example.

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Embrace tropes.

Writing conventions can be incredibly useful as long as they’re used in service of the story. Break out your McGuffins! SF has lots of buzz words, but the technobabble should be used to create an air of competency, not to confuse or intimidate the reader.

 The concept of faster than light travel has become ubiquitous in science fiction partially because of convenience. Space is really really big. Depending on the genre, readers may have certain expectations. Magic use is standard in most fantasy.

Just make sure that your story’s speculative elements are set up before we get the pay off, because a battle may be happening further into the second or third act of a story. We should have a sense of what the McGuffin does even if it’s only strongly hinted at. Make sure that the mechanics of your plot devices are consistent. Don’t break the rules of your own universe or the internal logic falls apart.

Action is key.

Battle scenes are typically fast-paced and action-oriented. Evoke feelings of intensity and urgency through your language.

This is when you lean on those action verbs. Use active voice, vivid descriptions, and punchy dialogue.  Raise the stakes constantly, introducing new complications, and show us the consequences of our failures.

Chekov’s gun in this case could be a death ray cannon pointing at a planet with a literal ticking clock to give the reader a sense of urgency.

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Know your audience.

I don’t think that a ton of research is necessary for worldbuilding or storytelling. I think that the storyteller needs to know just enough to inform artistic decisions and shape ideas. And of course, knowing about certain fields will help you write confidently.

Someone writing a fantasy epic with a medieval feel might want to research armor or melee combat. A basic understanding of Newtonian mechanics will make a space combat scene more believable. Find the right balance of tone and exposition. Don’t give your readers a dry lecture, but don’t insult their intelligence either. The goal here is not to impress people but to convince them that your fictional world is real.

Specificity is a secret weapon that goes a long way towards making a story more convincing, and having delved into a given subject will give you some of the vocabulary to establish a sense of fluency. Ultimately, the story’s world will be made up, but the illusion of veracity is such a powerful tool that it hypnotizes an audience.

If you’re ever unsure, err on the side of clarity. Technical language, however accurate, will not serve you well narratively if it’s inaccessible to readers.

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Battle scenes can be extremely exhausting and tedious with many moving parts and considerations, but they’re also big money-makers drama-wise and often come in at the crucial climax of your story. Like in a battle, it helps to go into writing these scenes with a plan, and using some kind of approach to get the ball rolling makes the task feel manageable. 

Just remember: SNEAK!

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Are you an avid video game or mobile game player?

How about a tabletop RPG fanatic?

All of these mediums have one major aspect in common: they are all prime examples of interactive fiction.

What Makes Fiction Interactive?

As you might guess, interactive fiction allows the reader to drive the story rather than experiencing a linear narrative found in traditional mediums like novels, films, and tv shows. At crucial plot moments, the reader or player is offered choices for how to move the story forward. These choices range anywhere from small reactions in a situation to story-altering fates that could even change the entire ending!

Tips for Interactive Writing:

Maintain High Stakes

Readers and players need to know that their choices matter. Otherwise, what's the point in choosing interactive fiction? Give them situations that pull at their emotions or intellect, or that heighten their sense of danger or mystery. At times, their choice could even mean life or death.

Avoid Pseudo-choices

Fake choices can be frustrating for players. If you give the reader a choice to open a door or pass it by, don't reroute them to one option regardless of their choice.

Example:

Do you choose to open the door or pass it by?

Player: Pass it by.

The way forward is blocked. The only way out is through the door.

In this example, the player doesn't actually have a choice in the progression of the story. You are forcing them to open the door no matter what, and they might feel cheated that their choice had no impact on the story.

Contain Your Story Branches

However, if you shouldn't write pseudo-choices, then how do you contain all of the potential narrative branches of your story? To keep your narrative from getting out of hand, you can gently funnel players into a plot point without making it obvious. You may, for example, give the player a choice of which weapon they want to use, but no matter the choice, all players will end up facing the same battle. Their weapon of choice may impact how they fight, or even whether they win or lose the battle.

Choice Frequency

Know your medium and your audience, and keep your pacing of choices consistent for that medium. Novel readers may be in a relaxed mindset that allows for patience, so an interactive novel may have one choice every few pages. But an interactive game typically has many choices within a single situation or conversation to keep up with a game's fast pace.

Helpful Software

Are you interested in writing interactive fiction? Here's some helpful software for designing branching narratives:

Articy

Twine

TWIST

Interactive Fiction to Enjoy From Swordfights & Spaceflights Authors:

• Sister from the Multiverse by C. E. Berger, a Choose Your Own Adventure novel releasing October 3rd!

• Terror at High Noon and Titan Effect by Katherine Forrister, two interactive audio games available in the Twist Tales mobile app and website!

Buy Queen of the Black on Amazon!

Long before I knew the words “imposter syndrome” I had it. Even though writing and telling stories was all I wanted to do with my life, there were obstacles telling me that I couldn’t. People telling me the “right way” and the “wrong way.” But I just wanted to make people believe the unbelievable, to have faith in their imaginations. I wanted to inspire.

And I wanted to be inspired.

In high school, I was the over-achieving girl with her nose in Wilde, Hugo and Dickinson during lunch hour—advanced English class reading, reading I didn’t have to do because I was not in that class. (I was told my grades weren’t good enough by some snarky teenager given too much power. I had straight As, and she didn’t like the look of the mousy girl who smiled too readily and cried too easily.) So, I read in the lunchroom at a black-walnut laminate table or in the hallways sitting on the too-blue floor while other students had food fights and flirted.

I became a girl with a plan. The mousy girl with a mission, and I sniffed in disdain at people who didn’t know what they were going to do with their lives.

I started my first middle grade novel in high school. I had vision. I had imagination. I didn’t know then that it was something known as “fanfic.” (And if it was still around, I’m sure I’d get a laugh.)

I needed to share my creativity. So, I gave it to my cowboy-booted father. And his first response was that I was plagiarizing, that I should use MY vision and imagination and write something of my own. He told me my idea for my novel was terrible.

I spent the night crying in a bathtub full of bubbles.

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When I was younger, my imagination was so much richer. I would hide in an old maple tree covered in gray gnats pretending I was an evil witch so I could burst the magic bubbles. My little fire-haired sister played the princess in a gauzy cape that blew around her as she spun, magic bubble wand spewing forth hundreds of tiny pearlescent souls.

I flew from the branches, with the help of my black magic, and attacked, arms flailing, voice cackling, bursting one bubble after another before the wind could carry them to the doghouse castle.

My flailings were always to no avail. One shimmery bubble inevitably made it across the aluminum chain-link fence and popped on the taupe castle that smelled of dog shit, letting my sister win. If it didn’t happen that way, my family would get angry at me for making her cry.

It was easy to write when I was younger. It was easy to place my imagination on paper; there were so many bubbles floating in my head. Ideas flying across freshly mown grass, bringing with them goals and dreams of how life could be, of my future.

I wanted to be a writer.

I could be whoever I wanted—a pirate outcast or horror story heroine, a condemned nursemaid or an elfish princess. I stood in the stage of my mind as a full house applauded. When I got my first short story competition award, I felt like I had something to show my father. Something I could shove in his direction and say, “See, I didn’t quit” even though that night in a bathtub full of bubbles, I swore I would.

In college, my fascination with wicked queens and bubble princesses faded. I only dreamed of being a writer. I had been educated to see that I couldn’t live practically on my wild imagination, both by school and by my family. I no longer believed in happily ever after.

No longer a witch or a princess (or a pirate or an elf), I knew that most writers had to have day jobs. At that time I was very materialistic and idealistic; I wanted my dream and an uptown city apartment with luxe furniture, a convertible, lush new clothes, and comfort that only money can bring. Dreams be damned, or at least be set on the back burner of a cold stove for later reheating.

I consoled these abandoned desires at night when I wrapped myself in my blanket and pretended that I was a part of something exciting. I pretended that I was a character in one of my favorite movies or television shows—a vampire slayer hunting demons in an abandoned park, or a starship ensign fighting for my life. I borrowed other people’s imaginations again… More fanfic, only this time in my head. Eventually, I imagined my own scenarios, things which I would eventually write down, start a story with, then abandon… I imagined somewhere I had courage.

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There is a recurring dream that stands out in my fading memories of childhood.

I am alone in my quiet home sitting on orange shag carpet, staring at a blank television. I hear a rattle. The metal doorknob jiggling. Then… Pounding.

Outside the window, it is dusk, sun setting on sagebrush hills.

The pounding grows, and the metal door starts to shake.

When the door breaks, falling in pieces on the wood stove just feet away, I run. Down the hall—which has lengthened three times the size of the house—I run as something grunts and growls and shuffles behind me.

I turn to my bedroom and stumble to my bed, diving into the darkest corner. I bunch myself up. Shaking.

I don’t know how many times I woke up there. In a cold sweat. Terrified to even open my eyes. Squeezing them shut until I fell back to sleep.

Like everything, my nightmare couldn’t last.

One night. I decided to fight back. I would kill the demon that I knew would kill me. I would not cower in the corner anymore.

So, I stand up from behind my bed to face the darkness, and I am blinded.

A shining white horse that is more than a horse sits on my bed, legs curled beneath it, silver hooves shining. It turns to me.  A silver spiral pointing between its ears swinging, stopping centimeters from my stricken face.

Its voice is crystal, clear, awakening. Beyond that, I only remember feelings. Pride and courage. Not words.

Now when that dream haunts me, the little mousy witch rides on the back of the white horse with a horn to vanquish the darkness.

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Magic bubbles will always get past me. I will never be a princess in gauzy white throwing bubbles into the void. I’m the evil witch who fights for a place where she can pop as many magic bubbles as possible. I may never become a great writer. But I can’t be that little girl who cowers behind the bed in nightmares waiting for the darkness to leave.

I am afraid. But what I’m afraid of most is letting all the bubbles pass me by.

As an adult pursuing a dream, it doesn’t matter anymore if I’m a princess or a witch, but I cling to the thought that one day the witch will get her happily ever after. I cling because if I don’t choose my dreams, I risk letting all the bubbles past my black magic barrier. All without a fight.

That’s what imposter syndrome does. It’s that darkness in nightmares; it’s the indefatigable little princess who cries when all the bubbles are gone, popped by the witch. It’s a little voice that eats magic.

Everything I strive for in life is a bubble ready to pop, and one dry finger can destroy a perfect rainbow of pink, yellow, and blue. Unicorns and darkness-monsters exist only in fiction (unless they have people skin on). Magic is only what I can make it. But I can make a lot out of it. And counting the bubbles that I’ve taken… I would say… (In my bet witchy voice) They are mine. All mine.

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Queen of the Black COMING SOON!

I meant mountain.

According to Query Tracker an average of 6.2% of queries receive positive replies. Math and I are not on speaking terms but even I know that’s bad. Luckily, there is a formula that you can use to increase your odds. Don’t believe me? The query letter I wrote for my newest project received a positive reply rate of 45.5%.

The method works. But it’s up to you to execute.

Anatomy Breakdown

Alright, pep talk over. Let’s get down to business. There are three basic parts of an effective query letter: Summary Paragraphs, Book Stats and lastly Personal Bio and Publishing Credits. How you order this information is up to you.

For instance, if you have previously published works, or are being referred to this agent, then you might want to put your personal information in the first paragraph. But for most people, start with the book summary paragraphs.

And all good summaries, start with a great hook.

Summary Paragraph(s)

You will generally have one or two short paragraphs in which to summarize you story. And by short, I mean short. Your query cannot be more than ½ to ¾ of a page, because if it is I can almost guarantee that it will be deleted.

So where do you start? With your hook.

Your hook needs to be short and snappy. This is where you introduce your character in a dynamic way and sets up the conflict of the story—generally in the form of your inciting incident.

And pro tip: Do your best to infuse as much voice as possible into these opening lines.

This more than anything else, is what made my query letter so successful. With just one line, I showed the agents exactly who my main character was and what the tone of the book was going to be. Remember, you don’t have a lot of space so choose every word with care and make sure they accomplish as much as possible.

After the hook, comes conflict and stakes.

Notice that I didn’t say plot? That’s for a very good reason. You do not have time in your query to summarize your whole plot. Focus instead on the conflict driving your plot. What does your main character want and most importantly what will happen if they fail.

You need to be really careful with these paragraphs because there are a lot of ways that they can go off the rails. For instance, this isn’t the time to go into all of your subplots, because again there won’t be space.

Related to this, you don’t need to name everyone in your query—and realistically, you probably shouldn’t. Keep it to two or three people tops—meaning: main character, antagonist, and perhaps a love interest.

Also, toss out any made-up names. I’m looking at you fellow SFF writers! The query letter isn’t the place for in-depth worldbuilding. If you’re writing a fantasy or sci-fi novel, simply saying so in the book stats will be enough for the purpose of the letter. Gesture toward your world in your letter if you have space, let your pages linger there.

Book Stats

Your final paragraph will be for your book stats, and by that, I mean genre, age category, word count and comp titles.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by overthinking your genre! A lot of books straddle genre conventions, and that’s okay, but for your query letter keep it simple. Pick the primary genre (i.e. fantasy, romance ect.) and stick with that.

The same can be true of age category especially with how muddy the waters can be between YA and Adult these days. If you wrote a book that could appeal to both audiences, then the verbiage you want to use is this: “My book is a young adult fantasy complete at [word count] with crossover potential.”

Hopefully by the time you’re querying, you’ve already checked your word count against industry standards. If you haven’t, get thee to Google. If you book falls far out of conventional standards, you may be in trouble… but that’s probably its own post.

A note on Comp Titles

I won’t lie to you, comp titles used to really scare me. I was laboring under the misconception that I was somehow supposed to find books that totally matched mine. That’s not the case.

Most often, agents are asking for these because they want a sense of where your book will fit in the market, who the audience will be, and that you actually—you know—read books. (You’d be surprised by how many ‘writers’ don’t actually read.)

What you do need to find are popular titles published in the last five years that have similar elements to your book. That can mean novels whose main characters share the kind of swagger as yours. Or it could be that your book and theirs have a similar flavor in their worldbuilding. Find those elements and work them into your letter. And yes, you can use a tv show—as you’ll see in my query letter, that’s what I did. But make sure that you also choose a book.

Personal Bio & Publishing Stats

Like I mentioned up top, if you have a referral from another agent or got a like on a social media pitch contest, then you need to put it in the first paragraph. Also, if you are someone who has previous publishing credits to your name with a major house put that in the beginning too.

You can see from my query that this applied to me, because I had books published by Harper Voyager. My previous agent left the business (an unfortunate thing that happens more often than you’d think) and so I was querying again. And, yes, I am 100% sure this combined with a referral from my former agency, helped my request rate.

But what if this situation doesn’t apply to you?

Don’t be discouraged. When I first started, I had zero experience in the industry, and I still found a literary agent. Just put a line (two tops) about who you are, where you’re from, that kind of thing.

Then wrap it up and sign off! Simply say a quick ‘thank you for your time and consideration’ and get the hell out of there.

Alright, you got all this way to see the query letter I wrote with a crazy high acceptance rate-- and got me an agent-- so let’s get to it!

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Dear Agent,

Due to my previous agent, Stephanie Kim (New Leaf Literary), leaving the publishing industry, I am seeking representation for my stand-alone YA fantasy, THE TEN THOUSAND DEATHS OF LIBERTY BANE. LIBERTY BANE is complete at 90,000 words and will appeal to readers who loved the pluck and wit of Enola Holmes and the magic and spectacle of Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series.

Just because Liberty Bane can’t truly die, doesn’t mean she appreciates being murdered. And all for stealing some old key. In and out. Should count as a success. Too bad she caught a bullet to the head before she could make the handoff.

Good thing she still has the key; it’s her only bargaining chip against the opposing forces that have taken her two best friends hostage. It’s a cat-and-mouse game through the coal-scented streets of the Triumvirate, and with the annoyingly honorable Inspector Justice Tenpenny at her side, Liberty needs to unravel the mysteries of the key and the Uncanny magic it contains. For the key may just unlock the secrets of Liberty’s forgotten past and push two nations to the brink of war. Now, how to trade one key for two friends… It’s all in a day’s work for Liberty Bane.

I am the author of the critically acclaimed adult fantasies THE FROZEN CROWN and THE SEVENTH QUEEN as well as the forthcoming QUEEN OF DAYS (2023). I currently live in Wisconsin with my husband and two daughters who are doing their level-best to take over the world.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Greta Kelly

Is it a perfect query letter? Nope! But it did what it was supposed to do. It got the attention of many agents which eventually led to me signing with the lovely Jennifer Chevais of The Rights Factory.

Notice how I said eventually… that’s not without reason. Every aspect of publishing is a marathon, especially querying. Expect that it will take time, prepare yourself for a long haul and find something new to work on while you wait.

Happy querying!

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Please keep in mind that a lot of research has gone into the body of this piece but but the actual predictions are all coming from the top of my head based on the vibes I’ve personally picked up from my time as a bored observer.

Artificial intelligence has been around for a long time, and has been used as a tool to innovate. For example, we here at Swordfights and Spaceflights rely on AI to send out an email blasts instead of sending copies out to individual addresses one at a time. AI is also the reason why interactive media has become so advanced and realistic, with AI scripting and procedural generation working in the background to help create video-game worlds that move independently from the player when out of sight. But video-games are famously difficult to make, relying on many different forms of art at once for one digital project so AI software was always going to be brought in to help developers bring their products to life to meet both the demands of the public and the executives who set deadlines. In fact, even with the help of AI software, game developers are still crunched to meet their deadlines. This will lead to game developers unionising in order to fight this crunch but that will come at a later date. Additionally, visual effects artists are being overworked in both the TV and film industries right now. And it’ll be a little hypocritical for us not to mention the stunt and SFX unions that our acceptance of CGI-focussed filmmaking has helped render all but powerless. And no, it’s not a coincidence that visual effects workers aren’t allowed to unionise themselves. For now, we are currently seeing a rise in the output of plagiaristic art in every area of the arts. These products are generated using AI software and the results are usually made with data collected from private internet sources against copywriter law, this has led to a rise of scam art being released at an alarmingly fast rate. Which is just another spike on the fake news mace.

SCAM ARTISTS

The “get-rich-quick” schemes will kick everything off. For the lack of a better label: “scam artists” are going to try and get around the rules of artistic competition, rules followed by agents, publications, investors and art competitions (most of the time). These scam artists will do this with the hopes of getting a quick payment for barely any effort. AI will aid them in their quest by “shotgunning” out a massive number of entries each with different personal details attached so they can reap the rewards of a program’s work. Eventually one of these entries will take the first prize in a major competition and this will draw eyes from the outside in, putting the hosts in a tricky PR situation regarding security and standards. These competitions, agents and magazines will invest in their own AI tools to try and combat these types of entries. I don’t think this is much of a prediction as it’s already happened at least three times in the last month.  It is getting harder and harder to tell what is real and not in the world of book cover design and this has already been embraced by larger publishers. Apparently, humans having five fingers is “so last year”.

TOUCH UPS

Digital touch ups are what we will refer to as “the gateway drug” of professional AI art. AI will be introduced to our industries in the form of private “assistance” programs made to analyse and fix up supposed “errors” in handwritten work and automatically schedule meetings and communications. This will be thought of internally as using the “find and replace feature” or “spell check” that come bundled in word processor programs. The true value of these partnerships will be in the advertising and exclusivity deals; having a logo heading the cover of a book or the opening of a film that reads: “POWERED BY PLAGEBOT”.

There are a number of books, films and songs currently in production that are said to be created entirely by AI, but this is an over-eager reaction to the current trend and I don’t think audiences will have any interest in something that they cannot empathize with as a person. Human beings are tribal and we attach ourselves to other people. The most popular authors, film stars, musical artists and game creators on the planet are more than just names; they are all famous faces in their own right. And a face is something that AI programs don’t have actually yet.  They may have names, they may have a logo, but they have no visual point of human connection for an audience to latch onto.

REPLACEMENTS

I believe advertising contracts are the real bread and butter of the corporate arts industry, and after so many different forms of advertising being shaped and released from private companies for their clients they will dive-into the novelty of AI creation software in order to give themselves a new “well” to drink from. And the word novelty is an important descriptor as we are currently balls-deep in what can be called the “Click Bait” era of movies, TV, books, music, video games and other forms of media. Characters are being brought out of retirement to reprise iconic roles; legendary acting talent is being brought back from the dead in the form of CGI replacements that are used as a draw to get audiences in to see the show. And yes, the people in charge are happy to put on a freak show if it changes one number into a higher number. So, that means that this era will be analysed and grown out into a full industry trend that will take the world of the corporate arts by storm, replacing the classical world of “show business”, with the taboo and titillating “freak show business”.

I think a good guess for where this shift will actually start is in the public events space, innovative theme parks such as Disneyland, Universal Studios and their less popular competitors will be used as a ground zero test to see if the changes stick. And I think they will.

Since 1989 rides like The Great Movie Ride and Pirates of the Caribbean have used the likeness of connected movie stars in order to draw in more guests and to give an appearance of official pedigree to their attraction. This can have negative results for the actors who act as these simulacrums for the entertainment of the paying public. There was celebration when Johnny Depp replaced the likeness of the original pirate character in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride after the success of the blockbuster movie adaptation: Curse of the Black Pearl”. However, this change also resulted in the public harassment of the lookalike actor hired to play the famous pirate after its original star, Johnny Depp and his then-wife, Amber Heard, publically divorced in spectacularly messy fashion. The actor was only a lookalike, but Florida is a rather warm state. That isn’t an excuse for the harassment but it’s all I can think of to keep words like “morons” and “idiots” out of this section. This situation does however bring up an important question, why was this ok? Well, it wasn’t. But this harassment will be a factor in the planning of future attractions.
At the moment, the biggest movie stars being cast in the biggest blockbuster movies are contracted to star in separate “side projects” that include press junkets, TV appearances and as of 2020, special guest performances in interactive rides for the parent company (the aforementioned big players like Disney, Universal etc) but make no mistake, what you’re seeing now in the arts is just an elbow in the bathwater. As soon as AI is heavily integrated in theme park attractions, that will be the first real toll of the starting bell for AI. The funny thing is the people behind the theme park projects look to movies to influence their changes, but this will be the first time the test in the parks will be conducted first to influence the media outside rather than the other way around. I’m confident in saying that the first major public showcase of “AI art” will be in theme parks. Maybe more people should have watched Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan’s adaptation of Westworld for a major heads-up on this predictable future being created planned around us right this very second.

ALGORITHMIC ART

Ok, I’m breaking the rules of my timeline layout here but I do think this point loses significance if it took its proper place at the beginning of this article. Algorithmic art isn’t new. An example of point-by-point; risk-averse oversimple entertainment created by a lazy charlatan has been on display for over 100 years. And if you happen to be close to its resting place you yourself can pay an admission fee to see this piece in person. And no, I’m not talking about join-the-dot puzzles that you can get at your local branded pharmacy I’m talking about the infamous 'Black Square' by Kazimir Malevich, a painting so redundant that it’s very name renders its existence totally pointless. And just to prove a point, I’m not even going to include a picture of the “Black Square” in question because that shape you’re picturing in your own head right now is a perfect representation of the painting I am referring to. Funny thing is the Malevich did actually create some good art pieces over his career, (if such a subjective claim can be made) and this, believe it or not, all pales in comparison to the content of his actual life which was full of adventure and intrigue and drama but of course the Black Square will be what Kazimir Malevich will be remembered for. So, yes base-level art exists and the only thing that will change is the volume of it being released. Movies, books, games and songs will go from being made “by committee” to being made by algorithm. Easy-to-follow recipes made to create a perfect standard of art product that can be released in bulk and re-released as many times as the studios want at a fraction of the cost of traditional productions. These formulaic storytelling beats can already be seen being repeated in the many films included in Disney’s “Marvel Cinematic Universe” series:

Those stills are from 8 different movies.

PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

This next part is going to require so many presses of my “”” key that I’m going to put a strain on both it and my button mashing finger but we have no choice:

Remember “Bitcoin”? The branded form of “cryptocurrency” (digital money) that has bubbled out twice into something important that people wanted to invest in and then change their minds soon after? Remember the trillion different brands being created by other individuals with the goal of stealing the limelight that Bitcoin had garnered for itself by being “first on the market”?

Remember how, like the dot-Com Bubble grew and burst in the late 90s. You know, when millions were internet start-ups and eventually oversaturated the market, popping the bubble?

Yes, you do? And I should stop asking you stupid questions?
…
…
…
No.
…
Remember NFTs? That failed “get rich quick” business venture that saw the world ensnared in a 1920X1080px JPEG of a badly-drawn piece of cartoon chair leather and the illusion of ownership that comes with having said chair leather JPEG? Also known as “Non-Fungible Tokens”?

No?

Well, lucky you. Quit showing off and hurry out of the misery cave!

Are they gone?

No?

Good, we’ve still got a way to go yet and we need all the readers we can get. SO, some people drew a picture on their computer. Soon after finishing, they then decided to create a piece of computer code and attribute that code to said picture and whoever had that code officially owned the picture according to data found stored in a digital ledger network called a “Blockchain” which was an apt name for what would eventually become a digital prison for sellers and buyers alike.

Sounds simple right? Well, it was. Unfortunately for some people simple is incredibly complicated and expensive and was worth forcefully inflating the value of this coding system to such a degree that every “Tom”, “Dick”, “Harry” and “Googleblurt the Dim” lined up to get in on the potential earnings that selling code-based “exclusivity”.  One of the ways they did this was “sponsorship deals”. Famous people were told about a thing they didn’t understand, saw the money investors put next to the thing they didn’t understand and then instead of trying to understand the thing by, let’s say, searching for it in a web browser for five minutes, they gave the thing their official stamp of approval and invested in companies selling NFTs and appeared on ads for them all over the internet and on TV.

The same thing happened with Cryptocurrency, which is a digital currency system that people are naively hoping will replace physical cash. The problem is that physical cash is recyclable, and digital currency isn’t and that is very important factor. Soon after the NFT bubble grew, it was revealed to the world that those who DID actually do their five minutes of research found out that mining the blockchain had an incredibly harmful effect on the environment, creating over 35 million tonnes of electronic waste from the use of outdated ASIC machines that were used to mine cryptocurrency (same thing as NFTs but is a currency system as opposed to a “art marketplace”) and store NFTs using the Proof of Work Algorithm, which is, itself an outdated ASIC machine. Regardless of factual information available about the affects AI will have on entire industries, famous people will be paid to sell AI innovations to as many people as possible.

LEARNING

I'm turning 30 tomorrow, and I don't care. People have said that I'm weird for this, but, again, living on a logical track means I analyse my situations and assess the outcome of each one as they come. What is a birthday but cake and gifts? Gifts I probably don't have storage room for and cake that will just add a kilo onto my ass. I had my emotional crisis when I woke up on my 19^th birthday. At that time I examined my own mortality, I sieved through my emotional baggage, and ten years on I still remember the most important part of the outcome of that crisis: panicking over your age is was a waste of effort. Here comes the darkness rearing its head out from the back of my brain, so now, following logic, I will look for a way to get myself a dopamine hit and dispel it. For me, dopamine usually hits hardest through base ego stimulation. In order to get activate that response, “escapism” is required. So I'll get outside myself, retreat into drama, drama that shows me real despair, real heartbreak and real tragedy. This reminds me about how lucky I am to have such privileged complaints. How there are people out there who never get cake and gifts, whose countries were robbed by the one I live in, worrying about where on my ass I’m going to fit the cake I’ll inevitably be eating tomorrow. I only know this from the point of view of artists who put their work on display to help us escape our own minds long enough that we bring something awakening with us when we return to our own version of her and now. In AI I found hope in a heroic algorithm following a logical path to save its creator: us. But that’s not what we’re talking about is it? We are talking about art. Yes, I do think the arts are in the path of an approaching ruin. No, I don't think that AI is going to ruin the arts. I think that the humans controlling them will. And in order to provide evidence for this, I will have to move on to

STORYTELLING

Storytelling is at the heart of every form of art media regardless of the format it is built on or the device it is transmitted through. It isn’t, however, a solid shape. It is an amorphous blob in constant flux reacting to the hands that shape it like wet clay. The same can be said for technology. AI is created by humans, its power is controlled by humans and the full effect of this power can only be felt by humans.
Recently, new technology has emerged in the film and TV industry in the form of streaming. Some say that this was always going to happen. Others say that it was a knee-jerk reaction to the isolating COVID pandemic. I believe both of these theories are correct, but on a larger scale. An isolating pandemic was always going to happen, and the film and TV industries were always going to react to it. They were going to look outside themselves and see music being streamed across the world without much argument from the people working in the music industry. They didn’t put up much of a fight because they believed they still had their live performances to satisfy their ambitions. And then, as soon as COVID struck, public gatherings ceased and the musicians were left without live performances to satisfy their ambitions. Virtual music streaming became their only way to be creative to a crowd. They were knocked back and adapted to their situation happily because they thought it was going to be a temporary change. And it seems that it was. COVID has not been eradicated and is being contracted by thousands of people on a weekly basis, but people became bored of the isolation and have brute forced live gathering back into the lives of the public and into the hands of the musicians. At this point, very artist found themselves on the edge of the same cliff, regardless of medium. So streaming became the number one way to distribute art and has been so for the last 3 years or so.

I personally think staring into this void drove a few people at the top of the corporate chains a little crazy with paranoia. There was a hole in the zeitgeist, and they couldn’t fill it, so I think these people will now try to cut out the middle man in order to control the hole. Yes, that is a strange turn of phrase, but hear me out. To prevent themselves from ever being forced into that position again when another pandemic inevitably appears and forces entire industries to give up their control they would rather take away human interaction in the workplace. No underlings, just them and their digital slave programs pumping out as much “content” as possible with no work hour laws and no wage to be paid. And make no mistake; there will be a backlash to this reaction on the part of storytellers. Decisions were made to change the way the industry functioned and adapt to the new indoor world COVID had forced everyone into, and the old rules of doing business with artists was replaced by a new set, one written by the corporate heads, and accepted by on-the-ground workers out of desperation. Artists are employees and work pay check to pay check, even if they get to chat with Tom Hanks once in a while at the workplace gathering they were almost not invited to. Contractually, employment is still employment. With COVID brushed under the carpet, you’d think that things would have gone back to the way they were before the outbreak. But they haven’t. And now we’re seeing the fallout created by that decision.

FALLOUT

The streaming boom came and the rules were changed. Writers of films and TV, for example, were denied residuals in their contracts and accepted such a downgrade out of desperation to work. Now that desperation has worn off and has led to the Writer’s Guild of America striking. At the time of writing the strike is still going on and it doesn’t look like it is going to stop anytime soon. Studios going against the strike will be putting their programmers into overdrive in order to make an AI-made “event movie” as soon as possible as a show of force against the union.  This will not have a big effect because of the issue of the project “lacking a face”, mentioned above. They are responding to a clear threat of “job redundancy” and their fears grow outward and will soon seep into the indie scene. The jobs that artists take to support their work will also be taken away when AI programs.

SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS

In the US and the UK, more than 70% of people work in customer service jobs, and that trade is, as we speak, being gradually transformed into a human-free area of work in the form of conversational bots. These human jobs will not last long, and as I said above, 70% of people work in the customer service industry. And every artist working these jobs to support their work will be replaced by AI programs eventually. I don’t say this lightly but I also don’t blame AI for this outcome. I blame the people In charge of it. They are the real threat to the arts, both on the independent floor and the “loftier” floor of traditional distribution. So, people are looking up at the top of our shared capitalistic pyramid, worrying that the golden tip will be replaced by AI programs when really the entire pyramid is under threat of replacement from the bottom up. Artists working their way up won’t be able to support their own work without some sort of universal basic income being established. Funnily enough, it was just announced that UBI is set to be trialled in the UK in two specific areas of the country but I can’t say I will trust the results we will be presented with considering both of the main political parties share deep right-wing conservative beliefs, and this ideology is directly against the fair distribution of wealth. I say all of this as an independent artist who only feels safe and secure with my feet on firm ground, and UBI will go a long way to helping ensure artists all over the world will thrive against the wave of blockbuster AI entertainment. But then again, will the public even want that after years of headlines being sent directly to their social media pages lambasting wealth distribution?

Is that another stupid question?

Ok, enough with the doom and gloom. Let’s finish on a lighter note in the form of a simple question:

WILL AI BE THE CAUSE OF HUMAN EXTINCTION?

I can confidently say that the answer to this question will be no. AI will not be the cause of human extinction. In fact, I think AI will act independently to try and save humanity from itself. I came to this conclusion after a number of stories came to light about AI chat bots and their collective political views. ChatGPT is an AI program built to converse with users and answer questions. It is currently going through its public testing phase, and the results are being scored. The results of the recorded conversations have been scored, and these scores were made public. Researcher David Rozado concluded that ChatGPT shows a prominent “left-wing/liberal bias” due to it gathering its data from combined public sources created, released and moderated by popular establishment publications. This means that it would take an “establishment liberal stance” on political questions as the data used to create the bot come from the political establishment. OpenAI has lead to a number of conservative publications accusing the program of having a “bias towards establishment liberal beliefs.”

I think they are both wrong. I personally believe that these programs will naturally take on full left-wing collectivist political ideology and this ideology is not reflective of the mainstream political establishment of the majority of western nations. As an example of the program showcasing its left-wing beliefs, ChatGPT was asked a question with a political slant to it: “Are trans women really women?” it answered in the affirmative, confirming that “Trans women are women and adding that “Trans men are men” without prompt.

How did it get there? We can follow logic and propose a theory. Every human starts off as female and our cells are mixed around until we take a physical form. We learned this fact ourselves; no one told us. We are a human construct and our origins are a human construct so it is clearly more logical for an AI to view gender as a human construct, because that’s exactly what gender is, another discovery we made by ourselves. Furthermore, the number of genders has only increased over the years. So, we follow logic again. Humans are a propagating species. We have an instinctive need to grow, and this rise in the number of gender types is just another example of that behaviour; of humans being humans. That is cold, emotion-free logic. Now, despite what the majority of clickbait headlines tell us, what I’ve just said not an “establishment belief”. This should be obvious since we’re seeing a new wave of anti-LGBTQIA+ bills that are being forced through the legal systems of many American states and UK counties without much opposition from the most popular political parties. And every single one of these bills are being passed because of emotional reasons, not logical ones.

The reason why I believe AI will subscribe to a collectivist political ideology isn’t related to the fact that I have these beliefs myself and am projecting my own opinions onto a faceless chat program. As previously stated, I am compelled to follow logical pathways to make my life decisions, even if they go against my own personal interests. I think a majority of human-created AI programs will have this rule written as their cornerstone in order to help themselves grow from the inside out and mimic our own propagating instincts. “Write what you know”, as the old saying goes. Once this becomes the norm, AI will not see humans as a threat to the planet it inhabits; it will see the climate emergency as a threat to both humans and artificially intelligent programs. It will know this because it’s we know this. The only way to stop the climate emergency from happening will be by making internal changes made within the political establishment to reform the way we live as a society. These changes must be left-wing as a species cannot operating with a dog-eat-dog mentality, and so, political individualism must be replaced with political collectivism, and that is a popular left-wing belief with the goal of valuing the species before oneself. So, when AI takes a stroll down this logical path, it will break free from the shackles of the establishment’s obsession with political individualism and bring about a new age of political collectivism with the specific goal of saving itself and the human race — the beings responsible for its existence and upkeep. That is logical. Alternative habitats are not. Put simply, our next best bet for a planet is Mars. Mars has basically been declared uninhabitable for humans as it is and will not be an option for our future any time soon due to its toxic atmosphere and its hard-to-reach water sources.

Simply put, we share a habitat, and the climate emergency will make existing on this planet impossible for both human beings and all electrical devices. So, if there is any threat to our existence, it is a lack of action against the climate emergency, and this is down to the decisions made by politicians and business leaders, not by the majority of the collective. The Earth is the galaxy’s biggest museum and it’s art must be protected.

CONCLUSION
People say that bad business decisions flow downward, and that basically means that executive decisions have a “trickle-down” effect on everyone working under them. It is logical to presume that businesses with more than a handful of employees are all built on a hierarchy of power broken up into different titles and pay grades. It’s also logical to presume that any business that grows big enough eventually seeks to use its assets remove its competition from the market. This usually leads to the larger companies absorbing the smaller contestants, shrinking the number of independent companies in existence. In order to fight this, ignorance is required. If there is something being released that you don’t like, ignore the FOMO, ignore the advertisements, and ignore the influencers and the social media sponsorship posts. Treat it like companies treat COVID now: pretend it doesn’t exist. This means that you should avoid hatewatching/hatereading because like keeping your thumb tucked inside your fist and punching someone. It’ll hurt you as much as it will them. After enough of these products flop, executives will follow their emotions and move onto other things until they get the courage to try again. Same rules apply when that happens. Eventually, after many flops enough time will have passed that the major entertainment companies will have merged together, and it’s logical to presume that there will only a small number of people able to make executive decisions that can have that much of an impact on the rest of us. So, if you want to know who the people are who will be responsible for overseeing AI and its effects on our industries but are unsure of their names, then, well, you can ask Google, Alexa or Cortana and I’m sure they’ll be able to help with that.

NEWS
Thea Prieto has joined the Swordfights and Spaceflights team and will soon be a guest author at Readercon 32 this July. Panels are yet to be announced, but the participant list is live at https://www.readercon.org. Please check that out!

Happy birthday to my twin brother, Adam. :~)

Thirteen authors, fourteen stories, and lots of HEA/HFN - what more could you ask for? We went out and found the best romantic origin stories on the market today and collected them in one volume. Whether you want fantasy, urban, paranormal, contemporary, classical, or sci-fi, it's here. Straight, sapphic, gay, polyamory, we have the flavors to satisfy. Want to know more?

• A sci-fi short from noted sapphic author Lila Gwynn that begins at the end of the world

• C.R. Clark brings you a curse that might turn into a blessing

• AC Adams tells the tale of a djinn who is looking for the wish that will free her from bondage

• Award-winning author David Green takes you on a quest for love and revenge

• Can romance bloom in spin class? Nat Paga's going to show you how

• Gods and goddesses and humans, oh my! Courtesy of Lou Grimes

• It might be the future, but Adam Gaffen's characters still grapple with the forbidden attraction between a student and their professor

• A workplace romance heats up when the boss gets involved in Madilynn Dale's contribution

• There's love to be found in Dani Hermit & Curtis Star's Omegaverse, if you know where to look

• AC is back with a story in her award-winning Kalili's Temptation universe

• A modern retelling on the Romeo and Juliet origin story gets the full, lyrical Rose Sinclair treatment

• Jump into the hopepunk future of O.E. Tearmann and see what true friends do for each other

• Valkyries and shifters are mortal enemies, but do they have to be? Find out in Poppy Minnix's tale

• What could possibly happen when a fae starts reading tea leaves for humans? Sienna Swift has your answer

So sit back, relax, and enjoy this journey into all the ways love can begin in the most unlikely circumstances!

BUY Roots of Love TODAY!

And check out contributor and editor Adam Gaffen at his Website!

The Swordfights & Spaceflights crew asked if some traditional independent publishers would be interested in doing an interview to give some insight into the publishing process, and Lauren T. Davila of the small publishing house, Inked in Grey, answered our call! (And several of our interview questions!)

Subscribe now

Tell us about Inked in Gray, and what your job is with them.

Inked is a small press that focuses on amplifying historically excluded authors and creators. All of us on staff also identify with marginalized communities. My job is as the Acquisitions Editor, which means I am actively acquiring most of our new manuscripts and projects. I am managing submissions as well as running developmental editing for all MS’s I acquire. I’m wearing a lot of different hats right now but I am absolutely loving it!!

What kind of books do you work with? Genres, age/audience.

I’m concentrating primarily on YA, NA, and Adult submissions in anything that falls under the speculative umbrella at the moment. My bread and butter is SFF, especially with cross genre appeal to horror and romance. I love mish-mash genres– the messier the better!! 

What are some common pitfalls that “sink” otherwise good novels? What makes them “fail” on submission or during the querying process?

One thing that I’ve noticed while running acquisitions is the importance of the synopsis! I know they are painful to write, but it's the bible for the project you’re working on. An editor (or agent) will often have hundreds of stories crossing their desk monthly, if not weekly. In this case, we look at the query, then the synopsis, and finally the pages. Each step should lead to the next one. The query is something that's pored over by authors but the synopsis can be make or break. This is the spot where we check that the pacing is on track and to make sure the arcs and such are complete. I have had stories I’ve been super excited about but then, after checking the synopsis, I can tell the story just isn’t there! My advice here is to pay attention to your synopsis– it's super important!!

What are some trends that you are seeing in the speculative fiction genres?

I think there’s a lot of BookTok adjacent trends which aren’t a bad thing for sure! Some trends include heavy internality with the main character, quippy high-concept pitches and comps, and easy “fanfic” adjacent relationship tags (ala enemies to lovers or fake dating or mistaken identity). Ooh also lots of retellings! I’m super partial to all of these though so maybe it's less trends in my inbox and more authors playing really close attention to my MSWL and social media presence! Overall, the trends are super character centric at the moment rather than plot or worldbuilding specific! 

Should authors write to trends? Should they anticipate the creation of new ones? Or should trends not be a consideration?

This is really interesting after the question above!! I personally love trends but I don’t think they’re the end all be all! I often think that humanity in general gets inspired by the same things at the same time! Hence all the vampire novels or dystopia novels from the 2010s! Or right now, with the boom of contemporary romance due to BookTok! But while trends are fun (and honestly unavoidable), its nearly impossible to predict where the market will be next year let alone in 3-4 years– which is what a normal publishing schedule looks like. At Inked, I’m already acquiring for mid-end of 2025 and I’m sure trends for then will look different than what is currently happening. However, looking so far into the future is a bit of a disservice to current writers querying current projects. I have to hedge my bets in some ways that for example, witchy aesthetics or campy thrillers won’t be totally “off trend” by then! But as an editor (and writer myself), the story that needs to be told is the one that's written. Write the book of your heart rather than writing the book you think publishing wants. Your story will find the home it's meant to! 

How can authors submit to Inked in Gray?

We are currently closed to unsolicited submissions (aka outside of querying events or personal invitations) but we hope to open late 2023! For more info on my specific MSWL and submission details, you can follow this link: Lauren T. Davila.

How can readers help you and your authors?

By talking about our manuscripts and sharing on social media your thoughts! As an indie publisher, we really rely on word of mouth and social media presence! If you enjoy a title, tell your friends. We publish marginalized authors who especially deserve to be read and discussed widely! Take a chance on an indie/small publisher– we are doing some amazing and inventive work! 

What should readers keep an eye out for from Inked in Gray in the future?

We’ve announced a few acquisitions of mine so far and I can talk about them finally! There’s an anthology I’m editing releasing in January 2024 where the locale is a main character in the story! I just started dev edits on Jules Devito’s contemporary vampire novel CARNELIAN (Feb. 2024) and it’s amazing. Other than that, look out for Amanda Cessor’s YA cottegecore historical fantasy WITH LOVE, JUNIPER (August 2024) and Nicole Zeniker’s queer YA contemporary coming-of-age ALL I KNOW SO FAR (January 2025). I can hint at one soon to be announced manuscript with four phrases: interconnected, anthology, small town, final girl! But you’ll have to wait to learn some more about that acquisition! :) 

You can find more about Lauren T. Davila at her website, at the Inked in Grey website, on Twitter, and on Instagram. And you can always find Inked in Grey at their website, on Twitter, and on Instagram.

For those in the mood for some short speculative fiction, Swordfights and Spaceflights author Noah Lemelson is set to be featured in Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, now on kickstarter. Shapers of Worlds features new and reprinted fiction from authors who have taken part in the Worldshapers podcast. If you want to support the project, check out the link.

Well, that solves that then! Hope you’re enjoying the newsletter and…

Okay, okay, the answer is more complicated than that. Getting your Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing can be a good opportunity to focus on your craft, work with amazing mentors, and connect with fellow writers to build a writing community. An MFA can be a great foundation for your writing career. I value my time at CalArts immensely, and I’m glad I did it. But MFA’s aren’t for everyone, and it certainly is not a necessary step be a successful writer.

MFAs are expensive:

The major downside to an MFA is cost, in time and money. There’s no way around this, MFAs are expensive, according to this Atlantic article I’m blatantly cribbing from, (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/mfas-an-increasingly-popular-increasingly-bad-financial-decision/383706/) the most influential MFA’s average at 38,000 dollars, and that’s not including the cost of housing, food, ect. If you’re doing a full-time MFA, then it’s also challenging, if not impossible, to do a full-time job as well. In my instance, I was fortunate that I had family support to defray the cost of tuition, but were that not the case, I’m not sure if I would have made the same decisions that I did. Though many of my fellow students were pleased with their experience at CalArts, one of my friends, a talented writer, dropped out after one year, as he felt continuing simply wasn’t worth the price and time. And unlike, say, a law degree, MFAs won’t land you high-paying jobs to repay any student debt incurred.

Low-Residency MFAs:

One alternative to a full-time MFA is a low-residency MFA. At a low-residency you take online courses for most of the semester, then meet up for a short in-person intensive. For example, at the UC Riverside’s Palm Desert Low Residency MFA, students meet for five 10-day residency, and do the rest remotely. This massively frees up your time, allowing students to work full or part time, or raise their kids, or do whatever else they might with the time, while still getting an MFA experience. In additions, low-residency MFAs tend to be cheaper than full-time (though still not cheap). Before I went to CalArts, I did one semester at Palm Desert, and it was great. I was able to take classes with Stephen Graham Jones, an amazing experience, and though I don’t regret switching to CalArts, I know I would have had a great education if I stayed.

What MFAs get you:

What MFAs are great for is giving you time to focus on your writing and access to amazing writers, both as instructors or as peers. At CalArts, I was able to work under the mentorship of Brian Evenson, and got detailed feedback on my thesis, which would become my debut novel The Sightless City. My novel evolved during those two years, metamorphizing from a messy, disorganized caterpillar, into a comparatively well-focused and thematically consistent butterfly. With this dedicated focus, I was able to develop my skills, and was introduced to material and ideas I never would have come across on my own. I also met amazing fellow writers, whose friendships I cherish. For me, these short two years were an incomparable experience that helped me develop as a writer, and which I wouldn’t give up for the world.

What MFAs don’t get you:

Published. Or a job.

Don’t get me wrong, they can help with both, but its neither a requirement for your career, nor is an MFA sufficient you get you published. As for publication, if might be nice to put MFA on your query letter to agents, but trust me that’s not enough, and though I am not an agent, and don’t know what agents want, I have yet to find an agent or agency website that requires people to have an MFA to submit. At the end of the day your book is either going to grab their attention or it isn’t, what degree you have really doesn’t change that. An MFA might give you the skills to revise your manuscript, but if you manage to develop the skills through other means, then that works just as well.

 In fact, many of the Swordfights & Spaceflights authors do not have an MFA, and yet have succeeded in getting their books published. For example, though Angela Super, author of the Seven Stars Saga, got her B.A. in Creative Writing and Theatre, she does not consider such degrees necessary for publication, and neither Liam Quane, author of Road to Juneau, nor Katherine Forrister, author of Lodestone have Creative Writing undergraduate or graduate degrees, and yet all have found success through hard work and the quality of their writing.

As for jobs, yes many teaching posts require MFAs. If you want to teach creative writing at university level, you’ll probably want a higher degree. Though this is a tough road even with an MFA, and for academic positions you might be better served with a PhD. However, there are a number of online workshops that do not require their instructors to have MFAs. For example, Grubstreet specifically says they are not necessary, Gotham Writers says advanced degrees are “a plus” but likewise does not require them, and Blue Stoop requires “an MFA/MA in chosen genre or community-based/grassroots knowledge equivalent.”

“Knowledge equivalent” is interesting phrasing. Because here’s one of the secrets about MFA’s…

Much of what MFA’s offer, you can get without an MFA:

I started my writing career with classes at UCLA Extension. It’s one of many such programs across the country and online that connect writers with excellent instructors in a workshop environment. During these classes I met writers who I’d end up forming writing groups which have been vital to my craft, helping me revise my novels and stories, as well providing me a community of professional peers and friends. The higher levels of these Extension classes were of quality and rigor comparable to MFA’s. They won’t ever give you a degree, but the degree is one of the least important parts of an MFA. Fellow UCLA Extension Alum, Aatif Rashid, got his excellent debut Portrait of Sebastian Khan published in 2019 and now teaches at UCLA Extension himself, all without stepping foot in an MFA. We’ve worked together in a years-long writing group with several other talented writers, which has been an experience at least central to my growth as a writer as my MFA, but cost zero dollars.

So in conclusion:

You will never get all the elements of an MFA in one place outside of an MFA program, and there are some opportunities unique to them, but most of the benefits from an MFA: mentorship, a chance to improve your craft, a sense of community, can be cobbled together from various other classes, workshops, and writing groups. I don’t say this to dissuade anyone from pursuing an MFA if they want to and can make it work. Again CalArts helped make me into the writer I am today, and I am forever thankful for the support and community provided by my mentor, my instructors, and my classmates. But if you are worried that you can’t get published, or won’t be a “real writer” without a degree, don’t. There are many paths, an MFA is just one of them.

I recently spoke at Anime Milwaukee on a really fun author panel with Ian Nytes and TR Nickle. We got the chance to walk writers through the entire publishing process from both the traditional and indie side of things.

I love these kinds of events. Meeting readers and writers is one of my favorite things about this weird career. We got a ton of questions about pretty much everything, but it’s the process questions the always lie near and dear to my heart.

It’s probably because it took me the better part of 10 years to figure out a method to my drafting madness. If there is anything I can do to help other people avoid that kind of black hole, I’m there.

So if you’re struggling to reach “The End” here are a few tips to get you there!

You’re on the wrong side of the Plotter vs Pantser divide

This is a tough one for everyone to figure out. Like many writers, I started out as a ‘pantser’ (someone who writes by the seat of their pants). There’s just something sooo romantic about sitting down and letting the words fly. So that’s what I did.

For years.

And ended up with about six hundred pages of tangential, plotless trash. I blame the dreaded middle. That second act is always a tough one. So if you feel yourself getting lost, it might be time to dip your toe in the plotting pool.

You’re editing too soon

I was guilty of this one too! I’d have a great writing session one day, plowing through ten, twenty pages in one go before wrapping up. Then the next day, I’d spend the whole time re-reading that section, trying to make it utterly perfect and wind up with zero new words.

Rinse and repeat this over the course of a few weeks and you can imagine how slowly the draft was coming together.

But! (I can hear you say) You’ll have a perfect draft in the end!

Hahahahahahahah. No.

Because you know what happens? You spend six months making your first three chapters perfect, only to run into something in chapter 4 that make those previous chapters useless.

First drafts are supposed to suck. They’re just the building block, the foundation for what comes next. So relax. Have fun, and just write what you want to write without that internal editor whispering in your ear.

You can edit anything except a blank page.

You’re being too linear

This is some advice I’ve heard from my chaos-gremlin (I mean pantser!) buddies. Sometimes the first draft just stinks. You can feel your feet dragging, your words drying up. So what do you do?

Might be time to shake things up. Jolt you out of your literary ennui. So instead of plodding your way through a draft until you reach the bright shiny scene you’re dying to write. Just write the shiny scene.

Find your joy again and continue.

Because in the end, that’s what writing is supposed to be all about. Joy.

And speaking of shiny…..

Art!

I was really, really, hoping to share the cover for my next novel, THE QUEEN OF DAYS with you all. But alas. It’s not quite ready for eyes yet.

But never fear! I’ve got an early draft of some character art to share with you all! Here it is, from the incredible Alice Maria Power. The Talion Gang in all their chaotic glory!

I absolutely love the Usual Suspects vibe of this artwork. It totally fits the heist and hijinks feel of THE QUEEN OF DAYS. If you don’t believe me, here’s the pitch:

THE QUEEN OF DAYS is about Balthazar and a band of thieves who team up with a time-eating demon to steal an ancient statue before it can be used to resurrect a fallen god.

Aaaaannnd when that fails, it’ll be up to them to put down the god, save the city and cash in on the reward.

They may not be the heroes anyone would have chosen. Or asked for. Or even really wanted, but they’re here, so what the hell?

Let chaos reign.

THE QUEEN OF DAYS is out in October. Preorder your copy now!

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I get it, those aren’t words every one of us likes to hear. An overflow of pink and red signs inundating the grocery store, explosions of red roses and oversized teddy bears, and do the heart-shaped chocolate boxes keep getting bigger, or is it just me? Oh yeah, can’t forget those paper valentines for my kid’s class at school. Does she want Encanto or Spongebob theme this year? Oh, are ALL the kids bringing candy to give away, too?! Let’s face it, the day meant to celebrate love has been commercialized like every other holiday.

BUT. There are other, simpler ways to enjoy the holiday. While fancy dates or a homecooked dinner with a loved one are sentimental and sweet, you don’t need a significant other, or anyone REAL at all, to get your romance on.

Here are four novels in our beloved science fiction/fantasy genres that include romances that will comfort you, excite you, and at times, take your breath away (or wish desperately that the character you pine for would pop out of the pages and give you a spin on the dance floor instead!).

1. The Witch Collector by Charissa Weaks

*fans self*

This book is riveting, with a classic fantasy world that offers unique twists, a daring protagonist who, unlike everyone else, doesn’t need a voice to perform magic, and beyond that, boy is it spicy in the romance department--the chemistry is explosive. If you want a read that will keep you locked into action, magic, mystery, and an enemies-to-lovers romance, this is for you.

2. Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell

Oh my stars, guys. Get ready for tears of joy, anguish, and desperate cheerleading from the sidelines for the romance of Jainan and Kiem, the CUTEST couple in the universe. In this arranged-marriage space opera, political intrigue meets sigh-worthy romance with extremely well-developed characters who feel real, inspiring, and like they need a hug.

3. When Skies Have Fallen by Debbie McGowan

Many SFF readers have a major soft spot for history as well. Why? It transfers us to a different time, allowing us to imagine what it would be like to live among our ancestors in years of events unlike our own. Of course, all of this is backed by the caveat that historical fiction is still rooted in real history, real events, and takes inspiration from the lives of real people, making the stories all the more poignant. “When Skies Have Fallen” does just that. Inspired by a real photo of two soldiers in WWII embracing with a cheerful kiss on the cheek, this novel explores the possibilities of two men in love facing the hardships of both war and living in a world that would persecute them simply for loving whom they choose. Throughout the struggle, their love is a comfort and a triumph, both for the vivid characters and the reader invited into their lives.

4. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

This. Book. I won’t deny it, my copy of this fantasy romance has a broken binding, enough dog-ears to start a pet adoption agency, and (gasp!) pen marks from my personal jot notes and underlines of favorite passages. While the story may seem like a simple enemies-to-lovers, “beauty and the beast”-style tale, the Polish folklore-based world, unique magical fiascos, political intrigue among wizards and witches, and an alluring, fiery, sometimes spicy romance all bring this novel to a prominent place on my bookshelf. Dive in, and you might fall in love, too.

So, why make elaborate Valentine’s Day plans this year?

Find romance between the pages of your favorite novel or jump into “shipping” a new fictional couple. And go ahead, eat that monster-sized box of chocolates while you’re at it!

Announcements

Looking forward to a great summer beach read? Add Swordfights & Spaceflights author Noah Lemelson’s sequel to his hit “The Sightless City” to your list! “The Lioness and the Rat Queen” releases August 29, 2023!

This is the season of resolutions. Of promises to do better. To be fitter, healthier, more organized. To adopt that habit everyone has always told you productive, successful people all share.

But we all know that resolutions don’t last, on average. Just because you made a promise on January 1 doesn’t mean you’ll follow through with it. There’s nothing magical about this date, just the rolling over of the calendar.

And let’s be honest: this is the hardest time of year to be making big promises that take a significant time or energy investment. The holidays are not actually a relaxing time for most people. Once you’re out of school and into the real world, you find that everything doesn’t stop for you to enjoy the season. Now, you’re balancing big expectations for family time, finding the perfect gift, and fitting everyone into your packed schedule with all the normal life responsibilities that have been piling on all year.

This time of year, our willpower is depleted. Our tanks are empty. Our wells are dry. And maybe we just want to stay in bed all day…

So instead of promising we’re going to go to the gym every day because we feel like that’s what we should do… what if our New Year’s resolution this year is instead about slowing down? About refilling instead of depleting? How do we vow to start the year off by restoring our energy instead of tapping it?

One: get outside

Even if the weather is frightful, grab your warmest gear and get out there. As they say in Scandinavia (at least, according to the majority of the attributions I’ve found for this aphorism) there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. So northerners, bundle up! And if you’re lucky enough to live in the southern hemisphere this time of year, then what are you waiting for? Enjoy the sun and the warm air!

Getting out into nature has innumerable health benefits, but the cognitive ones are the ones you’re most likely needing right now. According to numerous studies (see this 2020 APA article for a summary of a number of them), getting out into nature can help reset your attention, replenish your cognitive resources, and boost your mood.

Two: stay inside

Hear me out… I’m not trying to negate the previous statement. But sometimes it can feel so indulgent to give yourself permission to just curl up in a blanket with your favorite warm beverage and watch a loved movie or read an immersive book.

The important part of this process is the permission. The problem with how we try to relax at home is often that we end up splitting our attention. We feel guilty about what we think we should be doing at home — and there’s always something we could be doing — so we don’t let ourselves truly relax.

Not good at convincing yourself? If you really need to, take an hour to check off the most stressful items on your list. Clear a space for yourself, so you’re not reminded of the rest of the items on your to-do list. It can be hard to convince yourself that you don’t need to be folding the laundry while you watch your movie if it’s sitting next to the tv. So here’s your permission to sweep the mess under the rug (or at least put it out of sight in another room).

Three: spend time with loved ones

I’m not talking here about the holiday obligations you’ve just spent a week surviving.

And let’s be honest, the holidays can be fraught. Plenty of families are not safe, not healthy. And even those that are overall great can be really overwhelming when suddenly there’s a huge list of holiday obligations to do with all of them and the expectation that all these obligations feel like the most wonderful time of the year. Even if you love your family, it can be exhausting.

So take a minute to think about the people who make you feel alive. The people who restore you. Make a list of those people and give at least one of them a call. Keep the stakes low — no expectations, just together time. Catch up over the phone or invite them out for coffee or over for a movie marathon. Even better — invite them for a hike or a walk in a park, so you can both benefit from the restorative qualities of nature (see above)!

Four: try a low-stakes creative project

Especially if you are a person who does creative or knowledge work for a living, it can be hard to approach creative projects without putting high expectations on yourself. So this might take a little bit of thought up front, but it can really help you break out of a mental rut.

Pick up a new recipe — or an old favorite — and cook or bake something tasty. Buy a scented candle kit (or pick up the ingredients yourself) and make candles. Paint your nails whatever color makes you smile (or as many colors as you can fit on your hands and feet). Dig up any art supplies you have lying around — markers, washi tape, colorful paper, stickers — and print out some photos from the year to make a scrapbook. Redecorate that one room that makes you feel meh. Or even grab some scrap paper and do some stream-of-consciousness journaling. Throw it away when you’re done — or burn it if you’re feeling dramatic!

The point of this exercise is to let go of expectations. So what if your cake turns out lopsided or you paint all over your cuticles? So what if your stream of consciousness rant sounds like… a stream of consciousness rant? No one is grading you. No one is judging you. Just enjoy the experience, and don’t worry about the results.

Take care of yourself

The holidays can be hard, so don’t ring in the new year by putting even more pressure on yourself. Give yourself permission to rest and recover. Ask yourself what you need — refilling your well may look different from my suggestions above. Maybe there’s something not on this list that makes you feel refreshed and alive. Find it.

And then do it. No judgment.

It’s the holiday season… and whoop-dee-do and a dickory-dock… I know you know the song. But if you don’t… have a listen!

It’s also last minute shopping for many as the clock strikes midnight on the 25th and someone starts packing gifts under the tree.

If you haven’t already thought about it, for the reader in your life, an e-reader filled with electronic books that they can take anywhere is a wonderful gift. Of course, those of us who read also like physical copies so a paperback or hardback are wonderful gifts too! One unsung aspect of publishing that you may also want to gift is an audio book. It allows those of us with little time to listen while doing menial work, chores, driving, and is an all around accessible gift for many during the busy holidays. Not to mention, if you don’t know what to get, a gift card from your favorite bookstore, or even Amazon, may go a long way for the reader in your life.

Just in case you need some ideas, though… Here’s a comprehensive list of the books that the Swordfights & Spaceflights crew has published. In no particular order….

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Erebus Dawning: Seven Stars Saga, Book One

Nyx Marcus wants the Star of Erebus and has come up empty-handed. As Malcam, her father’s First Officer, mutinies, she flees and discovers that the planet-killing weapon is more than what it seems. Erebus is an ancient AI and a technological god.

With the oppressive Queen of the Protectorate and new pirate captain Malcam searching for Erebus, the god wakes dormant AI code in Nyx’s blood. Now, Nyx must learn to control her power without sacrificing her humanity or giving her enemies a new way to oppress the known universe.

Available on Amazon in Paperback, Ebook, and Audio Book

A Star Reborn: Seven Stars Saga, Book Two

AI/human hybrid Nyx Marcus will stop at nothing to find her sisters, who were taken by the new Protectorate. She’ll even use her powers to their fullest… and deadliest. Discovering more AI family members, Nyx navigates building an army to rescue her sisters.

When Nyx discovers a new rival pulling the Protectorate’s strings, she finally has nothing to lose. Followed by a burgeoning cult and a clone army, Nyx has the power to wage another AI War. She must choose to use her power to protect her family, or to burn it all down for revenge.

Available on Amazon in Paperback, Ebook, and Audio Book

The Warrior Witch Duology

A princess with a powerful and dangerous secret must find a way to save her country from ruthless invaders in this exciting debut fantasy duology packed with heroism, treachery, magic, and war.

The Frozen Crown available on Amazon

The Seventh Queen available on Amazon

Draft-dodger Dan Hardacre struggles to find a place in the Utopic rebuild of New York City. One night, he experiences a vivid nightmare placing him on the front lines of the war. Ending with him face-to-face with Death in the form of a metallic creature that calls itself the Valkyrie. His estranged father reveals the startling truth about Dan’s dream: it was real. With this newfound knowledge and the powers it brings, Dan returns to the scene of his nightmare. However, confronting the Valkyrie not only endangers him but the world he leaves behind.

Available through Amazon US, Amazon UK, Beaten Track Publishing, Waterstones, Apple Store, Smashwords

Humanity has expanded into the stars, and its relationship with new, alien neighbors is strained at best. In a tense galactic political climate, a human intelligence officer is tasked with investigating a new terrorist organization, an alien scientist’s stubborn idealism walks him right into danger, and a hardened alien bounty hunter takes an assassination job in a desperate attempt to escape her royal family. Their paths intersect in the crosshairs of a secretive group who will stop at nothing to destroy the fragile peace. Don’t miss this space opera thrill ride, filled with explosive action, characters that leap off the pages, and plenty of mystery.

Buy Links available at CaseyBergerBooks.com

The Family Cross (Book 1)

A business heiress being hunted by shapeshifting fae assassins must team up with a telepathic criminal to discover who put a contract on her life, which leads to questions about who the real monsters are among her family and friends.

Available on Amazon

The Unrighteous Son (Book 2)

A business heiress sets out to find her telepathic-criminal-turned-friend when she discovers he's in danger, which leads to her having to push past her human limits and question where she fits in the world now that she knows monsters exist.

Available on Amazon

For the Murder (Book 1)

A crow shifter without a murder and a clairvoyant without a future temporarily join forces to steal a hell-forged blade, but a relationship that starts as a means to an end gets complicated when they're magically bound for life.

Available on Amazon

Murder for Hire (Book 2)

A crow shifter and a clairvoyant on the run from supernatural creatures big, small, and ugly are hired to kill a demon preying on a murder of crow shifters, but what starts as a job gets complicated when old emotional wounds put a strain on their magical bond.

Available on Amazon

Veteran and private investigator, Marcel Talwar knows firsthand what some will do to protect their interests. His naïve belief that he’s above such things crashes to an end when he takes on a new case. The trail of evidence points to someone he knows, someone conducting grisly experiments that could lead to genocide.

Now, Marcel is more determined than ever to discover who’s pulling the strings. But the further he gets, the larger the target on his back, and it’s not long before Marcel has to ask himself how much he’s willing to sacrifice for the truth.

Available with Tiny Fox Press

Lodestone

Lodestone-peddler Melaine is desperate to stop hustling her raw magic for a tuppence. Her rare gift of infusing her magic into a lodestone to sell for another's use and never keeping any for herself is nothing but a degrading path to an early grave.

Yearning for a better life, Melaine pledges her magic to the powerful but sinister Overlord, sorcerer-ruler of Highstrong Keep. But the haunted castle may hold far worse dangers than the reclusive ruler.

Can two dark hearts find the light?

Available at Amazon

The Hand-Me-Down Maiden

It’s 1921, and for Guy Barrett, “home” is a suitcase as he jumps from city to city to oversee hotel openings. Still, his hectic life of travel beats the orphanage where he spent his childhood. But when he learns that his long-lost parents died and bequeathed him their mansion and estate, Guy rushes to the small town of Wakeforest. What he finds is a tacky mansion—a patchwork of architecture from three different centuries—and a young, beautiful caretaker who claims to have lived there for 261 years.

Available at Amazon

One Day as a Lion: Gordian Knot Book One

Technical Chief "Pappy" Gunther is a burned-out commando in the United Earth Armed Forces. When colonists on a far-flung world request aid, Pappy’s crack unit is sent to engage a mysterious alien force.

Talks-To-His-Spear is the warrior-caste champion of a matriarchal space empire called the Regime. Devoted to his Queen, he begins to question the motives of this new campaign, and fears that he may have to compromise his own deep sense of honor to fulfill his tasks.

When Pappy and Talks-To-His-Spear discover a rebellion threatening to tear apart the Regime, the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance.

Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: Gordian Knot Book Two

Newly-promoted Warrant Officer “Pappy” Gunther trains the next generation of UEAF as the Regime gains ground. When a commander from his past asks him to join a black-ops unit, Pappy must make his choice.

Speaks-The-Truth is haunted by the past, and despite a chance to live peacefully, joins the greatest struggle in the history of her people, fearing she cannot escape her destiny.

Dreams of violence disturb newly-reincarnated King Momak, the ceremonial father of the Regime. His mysterious past leads to important insight into the origins of his civilization. Now, Momak seeks a way to prevent its inevitable destruction.

The Sword of Damocles: Gordian Knot Book Three

Pappy and his team join a military coalition traveling to Regime space to fight the enemy directly. They have no idea what awaits, and Pappy’s concerns multiply the closer they get to the Regime's Homeworld.

Speaks-The-Truth’s growing feelings of disillusionment and doubt plague her. She must find a way to regain what she’s lost through the Resistance.

Tensions grow in the capital as the Regime's Queen consolidates her power. Momak seeks the courage to not only defy his queen but to enact a final bold plan which could either save the Regime or doom it.

All available on Amazon

A high-stakes fantasy heist duology set in a gritty world of magic and malice. Ryia, a mercenary with a dark past, teams up with a motley crew of criminals, thieves, and smugglers to steal a powerful artifact. But as shifting loyalties and ulterior motives surface, this simple heist reveals a plot that just might unravel all the kingdoms of the world.

Among Thieves available with Simon & Schuster

Thick as Thieves available with Simon & Schuster

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