Author Archive

David’s Index for 2021

Novel words written: 15,899
Short fiction words written: 15,175
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 165,870
Blog words written: 5,562
Total words written: 202,506
Novella words edited out: 11,656
Net words written: 190,850

New stories written: 2

Short fiction submissions sent: 8
Responses received: 6
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 2
Other sales: 1 (reprint)
Awaiting response: 2

Short stories published: 5 (2 pro, 3 reprint)

Novel submissions: 11
Rejections: 8
Acceptances: 0
Awaiting response: 3

Collection submissions: 1
Rejections: 0
Acceptances: 0
Awaiting response: 1

Happy new year!

Before you take your 2022 Camry through a car wash…

If you, like me, have a brand new 2022 Toytota Camry Hybrid and would like to keep it clean and shiny, be aware that it has a Pre-Collision System that will FREAK THE F–K OUT at the onslaught of brushes, soap, and water that is an automatic car wash.

Here’s how you disable the Pre-Collision System on the 2022 Camry before going through a car wash:

  1. Press ⬇️ on steering wheel left side until “gear” icon is selected
  2. Press ➡️ to select “crash” icon
  3. Press and hold 🆗 to change settings
  4. With “PCS” selected, press 🆗 to turn it off

To turn PCS back on, repeat the above steps, or just turn the car off and on again.

Please note that this is likely true of many other newer cars with collision avoidance systems or automatic windshield wipers, though the procedure for disabling them will vary from car to car. See your car’s documentation for details.

Shapers of Worlds, Volume II now available

Shapers of Worlds Volume II, science fiction and fantasy stories by authors featured on The Worldshapers podcast, is now available! There are brand-new stories from Kelley Armstrong, Marie Brennan, Garth Nix, Candas Jane Dorsey, Jeremy Szal, Edward Willett, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Lisa Foiles, Susan Forest, Matthew Hughes, Heli Kennedy, Helen Dale, Adria Laycraft, Edward Savio, Lisa Kessler, Ira Nayman, James Alan Gardner, and Tim Pratt, plus fiction by Jeffrey A. Carver, David D. Levine, Carrie Vaughn, Nancy Kress, Barbara Hambly, and S.M. Stirling. Get your copy in ebook or paper here: https://books2read.com/b/ShapersofWorlds2

Virtual Book Launch for Dispatches from Anarres Nov 18

I have a reprint story in Dispatches From Anarres, an anthology of Ursula K. Le Guin inspired fiction by Portland area writers, and I just learned that it is a “Powell’s pick of the season.” I’ll be appearing at the Virtual Book Launch, hosted by Powell’s, on November 18th at 5PM PST. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/6816337217448/WN_FEuiybLpT5KwOy-Hf5VsCQ

“Best-Laid Plans” published at Clarkesworld

I am very pleased to report that my short story “Best-Laid Plans” has just been published at Clarkesworld!

This story started at one of the “Idea to Outline in an Hour” workshops I present at science fiction conventions and writers’ workshops. In this workshop I walk the participants through a series of fifteen questions, which I originally got from my instructor Pat Murphy at Clarion West, which I have found reliably guide me from a vague idea to something with characters, setting, and structure that I can actually begin writing.

This particular workshop was at the Foolscap convention in September 2012, and in this case I started with the two-word idea “Space Mice!” and worked through the exercise right along with the participants. I don’t always do that, but in this case I did, and the outline I wound up with struck me as perhaps worth pursuing. But I didn’t get to it right away. In fact, it remained in a folder on my hard disk for over eight years.

As you may know, my wife Kate Yule was diagnosed with brain cancer shortly after I sold my first novel, Arabella of Mars, in 2014. I managed to finish the Arabella trilogy during her illness and death, but I didn’t have much energy left over for short stories. After turning in the third and final Arabella book, I started in on a new novel… but between grief, post-trilogy syndrome, a medical crisis of my own, and a global pandemic I didn’t finish it until late 2020. It wasn’t until February 2021 that I started to consider writing short stories again.

I’d been thinking for some time that the “space mice” idea I’d worked up back in 2012 felt like something compact, self-contained, and fairly lightweight, a good candidate for getting back on the short story horse. So on February 25 I started in on writing it, and by March 14 I had a draft. I sent it off to a couple of friends for their feedback, then after a few small revisions submitted it to Clarkesworld on March 29. On April 10 it was accepted, and after a few more small revisions it was published on May 1. That’s about the fastest I have ever gone from idea to publication! I hope you enjoy it.

The ebook and podcast are also available from Amazon, iTunes, and many other places.

The Forces of Light vs. the Cardboard Dark Lord

My body is a battlefield right now, on which the Forces of Light are combating… not the Dark Lord, but a cardboard cutout of the Dark Lord based on a portrait sent by my friends at Moderna. But though the adversary is fake, the battle is real, and I’m feeling it. Fever, body aches, lethargy. It’s not that bad, though, and it will pass soon. And when it has… I will have a standing army who know and hate that guy’s face.