Happy New Year!

Since 2011 I’ve posted an annual list of writing goals that I want to accomplish in the ensuing year. “Goals” in this sense are things that I can accomplish through my own efforts and perseverance, as opposed to “dreams” which require the cooperation of others. So, for example, writing a short story is a goal, selling that story to Tor.com is a dream.

So here are my writing goals for 2016:

1. FINISH the current novel-in-progress, where “finish” means it’s been revised and polished and is in my agent’s hands. I’m really hoping to achieve this by the end of the summer. Right now I’m 35 to 40 percent through a rough first draft. This is going to be a stand-alone novel, not a series, so when it’s done, it’s done.

2. START the next novel, where “start” means figure out the general idea behind it, and develop a rough outline with a list of characters. Bonus points for actually writing the opening.

3. PUBLISH a second short story collection. This is going to be a round up of all my short fiction published since 2012. Several of these stories are available to read online, but I might as well consolidate them all in a single volume. And since I have absolutely nothing else scheduled for publication in 2016, I might as well go ahead with this. It will be published by my own imprint, Mythic Island Press LLC.

4. Write a short story in THE RED story world. This story has been requested for an anthology that I’d really like to participate in, so odds are good it will happen.

5. Write at least one hard-SF short story unrelated to anything else I’ve done.

6. Write at least one novella set in an existing story world. This is an unmet 2015 goal, that I want to try again.

Okay! I think I can do this…so long as I don’t squander too much time on Twitter. 🙂

What are your writing goals?

Best-of-the-year lists and award-nomination lists are fun to talk about and it’s awfully nice to have your work appear on them. But these lists are also valuable reminders that we have diverse tastes and that our reasons for reading — and for choosing what we read — are all very different. And I think it can be interesting to take note of what’s not on these lists.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this year, some of it 2015 books, and some books from earlier years. Several months ago I posted about Claire North’s 2014 novel The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which was one of the best novels I’ve read in recent times. Ignore the cover. Seriously. And read it. After I finished, I was amazed at how little I’d heard about this book, and that it had not put in an appearance on either the Hugo or Nebula ballots. (It did win the John W. Campbell Memorial award.)

I just finished another 2014 novel, City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett, which is also a terrific book that, in retrospect, I am surprised I didn’t see on 2014 award ballots. (Yes, there were complications with the Hugos, but not with the Nebulas! And it may have been on best-of-the-year lists, last year, I don’t know.)

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Since 2011, I’ve been publishing a list of my writing goals for the year, and at the end of the year I take a look at that list and assess how I did at meeting those goals. So it’s time to assess 2015.

I want to start by saying that in 2014 I had some lofty goals — and I failed to meet several of them. So in 2015 I scaled down my ambitions. Here’s how I did:

1. Revise and polish the third novel of THE RED trilogy so that it’s ready for publication.

Yes. Done. And Going Dark has been published!

2. Write at least one novella set in an existing story world.

Nope! As I mentioned last year, I really want to write a novella. I still do. I like the idea of a complete, fully developed, novel-like story that can be read in just a few sessions, and I even know what story I want to write. Maybe in 2016.

I’ve only ever written one novella, “Goddesses,” which is available in my short fiction collection of that name.

3. Write at least two short stories unrelated to anything else I’ve done.

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For those of you who like to nominate for the annual science fiction and fantasy awards, including the Nebula and Hugo awards, here’s a roundup of my 2015 award-eligible work.

In the short story category…

“The Way Home” is a military fantasy story that reads like science fiction. It belongs to the subgenre known as “portal stories” in which ordinary people pass through some sort of portal to an extraordinary world. Bluntly, I think this is one of the best short stories I’ve ever written. I like its structure, its characterization, and its compactness — it contains an action story with multiple characters in only 6,300 words. Since I tend to write long, I take the latter as a personal victory. All that said, the story has garnered very little interest. So judge for yourself! “The Way Home” was reprinted at Lightspeed Magazine where it’s available to read free online.

In the novel category…

The Trials
book 2
The Red Trilogy

Going Dark
book 3
The Red Trilogy

The books in The Red Trilogy are fast-paced, near-future, high-tech science fiction thrillers. The Trials continues the story begun in the Nebula and Campbell-nominated The Red, and Going Dark completes that story.

A short history for those of you new to The Red Trilogy: The Red was originally self-published in 2013. It was republished by Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press this past June, with The Trials following in August, and Going Dark released in November.

Edit: this sale price is no longer available. As of this writing, the ebook of The Trials (and also of The Red) is on sale at most ebook vendors for $1.99, so if you’re interested, this is a great time to pick them up.

Edit: For the month of February 2016, the Saga Press ebook editions of all volumes in The Red Trilogy are priced at $2.99 each.

SFWA members: ebook and PDF editions of all three volumes of The Red Trilogy are available for download in the SFWA Forum. Once you’re logged in, you can find them by following this link.

That’s it! Thanks for stopping by.

I have no idea how long this will last [Edit: runs through December], but Amazon has put the Kindle editions of both The Red and The Trials on sale for $1.99 each. Tell your friends! Tell everyone! Don’t say I didn’t tell you. 😉

By the way, neither book has ever been discounted before.

Oh, and the math works out so that you can get the entire trilogy for $12.97 + tax.

Edit: The $1.99 price is also available at both iBooks and Barnes & Noble and Kobo! Sale applies to the Saga edition.

Edit 2: The United Kingdom edition is also on sale. It’s £1.99 at Amazon. Hopefully it’s priced the same at Kobo, though I can’t actually see the page from within the USA.

A new ebook anthology is just out, and it’s FREE. War Stories from the Future is published by the Atlantic Council. It’s part of their Art of Future War Project, whose mission statement reads:

The Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project is driven by the Scowcroft Center on International Security’s mandate to advance thinking and planning for the future of warfare. The project’s core mission is to cultivate a community of interest in works and ideas arising from the intersection of creativity and expectations about how emerging antagonists, disruptive technologies, and novel warfighting concepts may animate tomorrow’s conflicts.

My contribution to the anthology is a reprint of my short story “Codename: Delphi,” but the anthology includes original stories commissioned from Ken Liu, Madeline Ashby, Jamie Metzl, Mathew Burrows, and project director August Cole, co-author of the World War III thriller Ghost Fleet. And there’s a reprinted story from David Brin. New voices are also included in the anthology, in the form of contest-winning stories from Alec Meden, Nikolas Katsimpras, and Ashley Henley.

Find more information and download links here. Available in EPUB and MOBI (Kindle) formats.

Follow up:
November 12, 2015
This was a fun giveaway that brought a lot of visitors to the blog, though most of you decided not to comment! ::sigh:: But that’s all right. Since there were just six active participants, it was easy for me to give a code to all of them. The emails have already gone out to the address you used when you posted your comment. If you haven’t heard from me, check your spam folder. If you still can’t find the email, contact me at linda at mythicisland dot com (converted to regular email format of course) and I’ll re-send.

A big mahalo (thank you) to all participants, and to everyone who helped boost the signal!

Thank you to those who’ve served and who continue to serve our country this Veterans Day!

Because it’s Veterans Day, and because the audio-book edition of Going Dark has just been released TODAY, I thought I’d do an audio-book flash giveaway. Audible has provided me with download codes. So I’ll be giving away one code for each book in The Red Trilogy — and I want to have three different winners. So enter to win with a comment on this post, letting me know which book you’d like to win — either The Red, The Trials, or Going Dark — and if you’re willing to settle for your second or third choice.

My son-in-law, US Army veteran Edward White, will be selecting the winners. If you’ve got a veteran anecdote to share, he invites you to do so, but it’s not required to enter.

The Audible editions of books in The Red Trilogy are narrated by Kevin T. Collins, and they’re available worldwide where Audible books are sold. I haven’t been told there are any regional restrictions on the code, so do enter even if you’re outside of the United States. You do need to be registered at Audible/Amazon to redeem a code, but you do not need a paid membership plan.

Enter today! Winners will be announced tomorrow, November 12 (Hawaii time). Thanks for participating!

Full title: Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield

Ashley’s War, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, is a nonfiction account of the first wave of women in the US Army who volunteered to be part of the “cultural support teams” that accompanied Army Rangers and Green Berets on missions in Afghanistan.

These teams were developed beginning in 2011 because it was felt that women soldiers could interact more effectively with Afghan women, most of whom are forbidden from interacting with men who are not immediate relatives. The program proved successful. Women soldiers came to be seen as a “third gender,” one whose presence didn’t threaten the social status of Afghan men.

But Ashley’s War isn’t about Afghan culture or the politics of war. Instead it’s firmly focused on the stories of the American soldiers who volunteered for this program, and who survived the brief but rigorous training. These women came from diverse backgrounds. Some were regular army, some were National Guard. Some were on their own from a very young age, some came from strong families. Some were from families with traditional military backgrounds, and some were from civilian families. All were athletic and determined, and most joined the military because they wanted to be soldiers, and to experience combat.

As the story develops, it’s fascinating to see these women coming to terms with what it means to be a “strong woman character,” as we so frequently discuss in fiction:

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For those readers in the United Kingdom, the ebook edition of Going Dark is now available from Amazon UK. Find it here.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I sold The Red Trilogy to Saga Press, I was able to retain the right to publish the books separately in the United Kingdom, and I’m doing so under my own publishing imprint, Mythic Island Press LLC, though I’m only publishing the ebook edition, at least for now.

You’ll find the United Kingdom editions of The Red and The Trials at Kobo Books as well at Amazon. Right now Going Dark is only at Amazon UK, but it will eventually be available at Kobo too.

Amazon links:
The Red: First Light
The Trials

Kobo links:
The Red: First Light
(9781937197193)
The Trials
(9781937197186)

Two interviews are just out this week:

Over at SF Signal I answer questions posed by book reviewer and writer Anthony Vicino. Topics covered include the contrasts between indie and traditional publishing, military science fiction, and Going Dark. I think this is one of my better interviews. I hope you check it out!

And at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog you’ll find the Don’t-Mess-With-Texas interview, titled “Mission Complete: Discussing The Red Trilogy with Linda Nagata”. Here Andrew Liptak asks questions about all three books in the series, and what I’m doing next.