A Change of Pace and an Update

This blog has been really heavy lately. (As are the times.) So I thought I would lighten things up with a excerpt from the novel I’m writing, Majestic Seventeen. As you may guess, it’s about the UFO Phenomenon. Another one of my lifelong obsessions.

I had the basic kernel of the story years ago, when I first read the book Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington. The UFO lore was so rich and complex, led in so many dimensions, I was surprised it didn’t appear more in popular entertainment. It would be fun to write.

I missed the whole “Glowing Auras and Black Money” article furor originally. But when the three videos GIMBAL, GOFAST, and FLIR made worldwide news I clued back in, and realized now was the time for this story.

At this point in the story my main character, Carmen Acevedo, has already been nabbed by Majestic because he’s seen too much:

“You pendejos really are spying on us!” 

Quinn grunted with what seemed like amusement. “We spy on everyone. Most people are boring as shit.” 

Carmen saw no need to disbelieve him. “What about Emilio?”

 Whitmer fiddled with his phone, and an image came up of a terrified-looking cousin Emilio in an interrogation room. The timestamp said 12:04 AM. Three hours ago? Emilio was being badgered by three men in Air Force uniforms, but he quickly conceded and signed a paper, just like Carmen had. Then he was hustled out of the room. 

“Mr. Diaz got quite a scare, but he realizes now that your message was a matter of national security. Will he be quiet?” Whitmer asked coyly. 

“Yes,” Carmen said. Emilio was a stand-up guy. If asked to keep quiet by appealing to his patriotism, he would. 

“Then let’s go,” Whitmer said, and exited the car. Quinn followed.

When Carmen got out of the car, he realized where they were. In the distance, lit by floodlights, was the famous Vehicle Assembly Building, looming huge and white. Closer and to the right, there was a rocket in a gantry, also lit by floodlights. The limo was parked on an ancient, cracked slab of concrete. The sound of the Atlantic surf came distantly from what must be the east. 

“This is Kennedy Space Center.” Carmen had come here on a Boy Scout trip. Once seen, it wasn’t forgotten. “Why are we here?”

With an annoying smirk, Quinn pointed upwards.

Carmen looked up. 

He saw nothing. 

Or did he?

There was something up there—some weight or mass in the air above them. Carmen realized he could no longer hear the surf, the insects. A weird silence had descended.

Then a deep, subsonic humming arose from the silence. The sense of weight, oppression increased. The hair stood up on his arms and neck.

“What—?” 

“Just wait,” Quinn said, grinning.

A column of red light suddenly pierced the darkness, shining down from— —a ship, a craft, an aircraft? It was triangular, black, and huge—stupefyingly huge. Like a building flying. Stories tall, wide as a football field. It descended over them, silent but for that humming noise—no engines, no wind from its descent. It fell eerily down from the sky, too quiet, too slow.

About thirty feet over their heads, it stopped. Its surface was matte black and featureless, except for a faint tracery of pattern—circuitry maybe. The red light had been replaced by three smaller white lights at the corners. A cylinder extended down from its underside; a door opened. A lift.

Carmen tried to speak, couldn’t. Swallowed, tried again. “Where are we going?”

 “Alaska,” Quinn said, and stepped in the lift. 

Whitmer gestured, after you, and Carmen steeled himself and entered as well.

Some doors you can never go back through.

I hope you like it! I’m all but done with the first draft.

October 14, 2025 0

The Pono Way is Horribly Relevant Once Again

I wrote my second novel, The Pono Way, during Donald Trump’s first administration. Published it toward the end. I was pleased to see that even those who didn’t really enjoy the book, still got the message: be welcoming to immigrants. They need help, not condemnation.

The book got some good reviews and was a semi-finalist in an indie sci-fi contest, so I was pleased with it overall. I’m glad the book arrived in time to be relevant, but I was relieved that its message, speaking out against MAGA’s particular blind anti-immigrant furor, was no longer so necessary.

But here it is again. FOTUS is back, and masked thugs are snatching people off the streets without warrants, badges, or accountability. Brown people. Foreign people. People going to their immigration meetings. And the occasional natural-born American citizen caught up in the sweeps. Oops. Trump’s brownshirts. Hard to believe. Hard to accept.

So The Pono Way is relevant once again: follow the message of Leviticus to welcome the stranger among you as your own, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. And the ethos of the United States: give me your tired, your poor… I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

This means a great deal to me. My mother was an immigrant. I’m a second-generation American. I can feel it, the xenophobia. It’s personal to me. It’s not abstract. I hate it! America is built from the grit of generations of people like my mom, who took a powder on their whole entire lives, and went to live a new one in the New World. And the people who survived being snatched from everything they’d ever known, the destruction of their ways of life. . To deny that is morally insidious.

So, I kind of hate that the book is newly relevant again, but I’m also glad it out’s there, doing its job, a tale to point people to. It has a happy ending! I like to write positive sci-fi.

Also it’s short. A short novel but I put a lot into it. It’s short, it’s on Kindle Unlimited, and it has a happy ending. We all could use one. So check it out!

July 29, 2025 0

Scorpio Rising

So it’s my birthday month. This year for my birthday I’d like to ask your help in buffing up my “author platform” – my “Kirsten Corby, Author” social media. I’m getting more serious about properly marketing my work, as MJ-17 isn’t going to be finished anytime soon.

The best thing you can do, of course, is review my books, if you’ve read them, at Amazon or Goodreads. Just a couple sentences is all it takes. Even if you didn’t like them! A couple negative reviews lend legitimacy.

While at Amazon, find me and “Follow” me as an author. If I get enough people following, I can access the analytics, which could help my advertising efforts.

Here’s my Author page, all it takes is one click:

http://www.amazon.com/author/kirstencorby

Thanks!

November 13, 2023 0

PONO WAY News

So I have good news and bad news about my book THE PONO WAY.

Good news: the book gained a really positive and lengthy review on Amazon. Check it out here. Thanks, K Reviews! An auspicious name for me!

Perhaps that sale came through the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. Which — segue! — brings us to the bad news.

THE PONO WAY did not make it to the final round of the competition. Not really bad news, I guess, but not-great news.

I was expecting it. Reviews by contest judges were mixed. And there were only seven finalists, so the competition was steep.

I’m happy to have made it through the semi-finals. Big shot of confidence for my career.

Congratulations to all the SPSFC finalists! May the best entrant win. Here they all are:

May 4, 2023 2

Changing Vision

If you’re interested in my work, you’ll like this video by the estimable Beau of the Fifth Column

This video comes to me today in a low place. I needed this. Encouragement. Support. Thank you, Beau.

It’s short, and it’s impactful. Do watch it. Fuel for the journey.

March 2, 2023 0

Review – The Pono Way by Kirsten M. Corby

https://wp.me/p4EDgX-uM

Here’s a lovely review of The Pono Way for the SFSPBC.

In other news, I’m writing my dad’s obituary. That’s what I’m working on.

February 14, 2023 0

Life Comes at You Fast

So I have some good news and some terrible news. Good news first.

THE PONO WAY has advanced to the semi-finals of the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest! Out of 300 books, my book has advanced to the top 30. That is a hell of an accomplishment, I think! Last time I entered a contest like this I didn’t make it through the slush pile. I’m so proud!

Now the terrible news.

My Dad has died.

It was quick, a stroke or heart attack or some such. My brother found him in his kitchen.

That was a hell of a shock, I tell you. As far as we all knew, he had a good bill of health for an 85-year-old man.

My hope this year was to spend more time with Dad and try to draw him back out into the world since my Mom died and the pandemic. That we could help each other back into the world.

Instead I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him.

In some ways it’s good he went so fast. He lived independently and in his right mind until the last day of his life. Good for him. Hell for us.

My brother and I will be dealing with his affairs for a while. It just happened. We don’t even have the death certificate yet.

Say a prayer or light a candle for the soul of Roger Corby, if you do such a thing. We could all use the help.

Bye, Dad, I love you. Thank you for everything.

February 14, 2023 0

My Artist Statement — an Update

Can it really have been a year since I blogged on Atlantis Fallen? My goodness. I know time has no meaning these days, but that’s too long. I used to love blogging. It was my refuge.

I need to be more visible. I WANT to be more visible. Making the first round of the Self-Published Sci-Fi Contest has reminded me I have something worth selling.

So as an update on what I’ve been doing this year, I wrote an Artist’s Statement:

I joined the Great Resignation, and took early retirement to write full time. None of us have as much time as we thought, so I need to devote mine to using this gift I’ve been given, of storytelling. I told my first story before I could read or write. I dictated it to my mom, and she folded the paper into a little quattro, and I illustrated it. My dad still has it.

The first book I recall reading on my own, for my own pleasure, was a Scholastic Books compendium of Greek myths — the Labors of Hercules, Theseus and the Minotaur. I’m sure that’s what gave me my enduring taste for the fantastic and otherworldly. I write what I read growing up in the 1960s and 70s, the era of Star Trek and the New Wave in science fiction. That’s pulpy, entertaining speculative fiction that also advocates progressive values, and interrogates structures of power and belief. My goal is to entertain people by telling tales of other worlds, which help them think how we could manifest a better world here and now.

December 16, 2022 1

Great Contest News

Hey I have some great news! From an unexpected quarter. A while back I entered The Pono Way into the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. And it made it through the first round! On to the quarterfinals with my team of reviewers, Team Galactic Beards! Details below.

Team Galactic Beards

SPSFC 2: Team GSV Galactic Beards

This is progress! Daughter of Atlas got bounced in the first cut of the Self-Published Fantasy Blook Blog-Off a couple years ago.

December 7, 2022 1

MY LANE IS THE HIGHWAY

There was a piece of advice going around at the 20 Books Vegas conference that really is true, but I can’t take to heart:

“Stay in your lane.”

Meaning, write to market, keep writing what you know and what your readers like to keep buying. Do what works. Don’t waste time in different genres or sub-genres that your core readers don’t like. If you must, use a pseudonym and start a whole separate marketing campaign. Shifter romance, domestic suspense, post-apocalyptic, military sci-fi, reverse harem. Whatever. Stay in your lane.

This is a valid strategy if you are working on the rapid-release model of writing, where you are trying to earn your living with your writing. Write what brings in money, yes. Don’t waste your energies on side projects.

But I’m not trying to support myself with my writing in that bread and butter way. I’m retired, I have retirement income and healthcare. I’m good so far. I want my writing to be successful, certainly. But I won’t be evicted without it. I have some breathing room, I guess. And I need it, because I find this idea stay in your lane pretty stifling.

Or at least, let’s widen the lane. My lane is, at its loftiest, “speculative fiction.” In more workaday terms, science fiction and fantasy. It is what I have read and enjoyed since before I can remember now, and what I want to write. All of it, not a razor-thin slice of a subgenre. I write to express myself, and I want to express myself in different forms. I want to try my hand at high fantasy and urban fantasy, at space opera and alternate history, sword and sorcery and solarpunk. All of it. I have so many ideas. At this point I feel it would be a disservice to my craft to do otherwise. To confine it to a marketable category.

I left the paid workforce to no longer be subject to the demands of the market. To do what I wanted to do. So why shackle myself right back to the market?

I think over time, as I develop my body of work, readers will be able to see the themes and issues that preoccupy me: strong female characters, our relationship with the earth, drawing inspiration from myth and history. You can see that already in the two books I’ve published.

I want my lane to be the entire broad highway, the entire mighty river of speculative fiction. The same course that, as a reader, I have been navigating my whole life.

It seems an artist’s statement might help me refine my ideas here. I could share that, if that’s not too lofty, and invite readers along on that journey across the forms of speculative literature.

December 30, 2021 1