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  • Why I Sci-Fi

    Posted on by amber Comment

    In assorted ways, not all of which are insulting, I get asked on a regular basis about why I write sci-fi. This is attempt #6 to write this blog in a way I don’t hate. Because this is tied tightly to my tastes in media, and, like any other taste (why do you like your favourite food or preferred musical genre or fave Ghostbuster?), there’s some aspect of “it just hits my brain/heart/taste buds right.” But “I write sci-fi cos I love it” doesn’t really seem like enough answer. So, list! Because I find refuge in bullet points. I’m going to give you five. Five is a nice number.

    I write sci-fi because:

    • I love it. Heh.
    • I was raised on it, so the inside of my head is basically a multi-verse of all the realities and worlds I’ve experienced via books, films, and TV. And I wouldn’t change that.
    • It can be a non-threatening way to let people consider issues (political, social, environmental, etc) and experience points of view that differ from their own. That’s super important.
    • It’s not constrained by reality, not if you can find a way to justify or kind of explain a thing. So, even if those people who say there are only a certain number of actual plots are right, you have in sci-fi an infinite number of places, people, and props to use for those stories.
    • The real world has often been a place where I was treated unkindly, belittled, told to give up on my dreams. Why wouldn’t I want to take breaks from that to, among other things, ride Shai Hulud, wield a light sabre, or fight Lectroids after putting on a rock show? (After I publish this, I’m going to be upset at all the fictional worlds I didn’t mention here…I’m noting that in order to have this place to tell myself “PUT DOWN THE KEYS; this is fine.”) I might be a poor kid who can’t afford to go to the cinema or on a holiday, but I have always been able to leave this planet or time behind.

    Amber and a friend in cheap silver costumes, making silly duck faces and throwing peace signs in front of a picture of space. A filter makes their colouring look alien.Remember that I am a serious space explorer. Is this how Earth girls selfie? (Sorry, Cat.)

    So-called literary stories usually leave me depressed. Horror, unless it’s sci-fi horror, often leaves me unimpressed or laughing at things I’m not supposed to. Fantasy often leaves me pining for the past (where all the elves and dragons lived…though there are also some incredible fantasy stories that make it my second favourite genre, many of which happen other places or in the present). But sci-fi…Yeah, it might make me pine, but it also lets me escape, lets me be amazed, and, most importantly, gives me hope.

    I write sci-fi because it got me through and still does. (Frank Herbert and the mantra against fear would deserve my first born if he were still alive and if I had kids.) Sci-fi made me a more thinking, compassionate, open person. If I’m going to consume resources on this planet, the least I can do is try to pass that on to someone else.

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape
    Peace Fire is out 11 October!
    Pre-order your Kindle edition here.
    Sale price until 10 October


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  • A Little Revealing

    Posted on by amber Comment

    Peace Fire is due out 11 October and, oh yes, it’s time to show you the cover for it!

    Because maybe this little look at a blurb from Ernest Cline got you interested:

    White text on a dark background: "A smart, fun, fierce tale of geek revolution and high-stakes adventure." -Ernest Cline, Bestselling Author of Ready Player One

    And then maybe this cheeky little bum flash (aka the back cover) has you just too excited to wait:

    A circular metallic shape above the text: In 2050, the world is a little denser, a little greyer, and a little more firmly under the corporate thumb. Wriggling carefully under that thumb, in their dimly lit flats, Katja and her friends have tended to walk the fine line between cyber criminals and cyber crusaders. For them, no physical reality compares to their lives built on lines of aggressive code. But then somebody blows up the office where Katja is pretending to be a well-behaved wage slave and jolts them into the concrete and clouds of corporeal Seattle. Of brains infiltrated by a clandestine threat. Can a handful of digital warriors win a war that stretches into the world on the flesh and blood side of their computer screens?

    So, let’s just flip it around and pull back a bit and…here’s the money shot:

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape

    I took a few weeks to research possible artists for the cover. Putting a cover on your book is like…dressing it up for a performance or a job interview or a first date with the person who may be The One. It’s not something I take lightly. I know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, at least not when you’re metaphorically talking about people, but we all judge actual books by their covers. Oh, man, what if I got the wrong artist and my book showed up for its first date in something entirely unlike it and the person never called it back?!?!

    But I had seen George Cotronis’s work on my friend Mercedes’s books. And checking out the other pieces on his web site made me feel like this was the artist to make the picture in my head happen. In fact, I had the pictures in my head for all three books currently planned for this series. And, someday, I might pay someone to make them just so I can see those in the flesh (or at least in the pixels). And I totally admit that I braced for disappointment when he asked if he could try his own idea first. My brain doesn’t easily let go of its ideas about how a thing should be.

    Imagine my delight when even his first draft was awesome. When my bookseller friend who is obsessed with cover art declared it a great cover. Then George took feedback and poked and prodded and…And there it is. A cover I love, a cover that is the right outfit for this book’s first date, a cover now released into the world.

    A cover that I suspect gets even better when you’ve read the book. But maybe that’s just my delight spilling over.

    Either way, I hope that you see this cover and think that this is a book you’d like to take on a first date. (I am biased towards you buying the print version so that you can hold both the front and back in your hands. Isn’t that the goal of most people on first dates?)

    Want to set up that date now, for cheaper? (I won’t judge; cheap dates can be great.) We’ve got the pre-order live and at a reduced price (save a couple bucks!) from now until the night before the book is published. For now, that’s just for the Kindle version, but we should have some other early options posted on social media (Facebook or Twitter) over the next few months.

    If you do your ebook shopping somewhere else, let me know and we’ll see what we can do about pre-order prices there as well!

    Thanks for following along on my crazy “First Published Book!!” adventure. I hope there are many more !! to come for all of us!

    xxx

    Pre-order your Kindle edition here.
    Sale price until 10 October


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  • Warming Up the Blogging Machine

    Posted on by amber Comment

    Hello, strangers. After a streak of weekly posts, I’ve been quiet (too quiet?) the last 6 months. Did you miss me? Did you wonder how I could forsake writing?

    I’ll just assume you’ve answered “yes” to both. But! I come with news. You see, I wasn’t forsaking writing. Not at all. In fact, my first sci-fi novel will be published in a few months. See? Totally busy with writing things.

    Now, I know you’re all still due an updated entry on autism, now that it’s been over 18 months (close to 21 months, actually) since my diagnosis and I’ve had time to educate myself and process and so forth. And I swear that that is on my list; it is going to happen. But I think you can see how the impending publication of a book is kind of a massive deal to me. So, I’m going to get back to more regular blogs. Because writing a book is a journey and I have Thoughts.

    We’re about a week out from a cover reveal, but what I can reveal is this:

    The book is called Peace Fire, and the awesome Ernie Cline, bestselling author of Ready Player One, had this to say about it:

    White text on a dark background: "A smart, fun, fierce tale of geek revolution and high-stakes adventure." -Ernest Cline, Bestselling Author of Ready Player One

    So, keep an eye out! In addition to reading blogs here, you can follow me on Facebook. There should be a steady trickle (that will increase to a torrent!) of content for the next little while.

    xxx


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