Category: Daughter of Atlas

Art as Resistance: Writing in Troubling Times

I’m doing good work on Majestic Seventeen, my current project. Creeping forward 500 words at a time. “The End” has assumed the nature of the horizon: an abstract concept that recedes before you, never attained. It’s a big book!

But I write because I don’t know what else to do.

When the World Feels Like It’s Burning

It’s hard to articulate even to ourselves how bananas and terrible everything is right now. Oligarchs crashing the entire world economy to enrich themselves further. Law-abiding people being detained and disappeared. A dipshit narcissist tech nerd chainsawing the federal government for no good reason as far as I can see. Meaning and reality themselves totter under the weight of lies and conspiracy theories. And that doesn’t even touch on the endemic problems that fester in the background — climate change, inequality. The wheels are just coming off our civilization.

This is why I write speculative fiction. To try to imagine something different, something better. Hope arising in the ruins, from lost Atlantis, from America. I have personal experience with that, rising from ruins. Hurricane Katrina. This year is the twentieth anniversary. It always shows up in my work and it will show up in a big way this year.

I watched this ruination for a while. My entire career. Public librarianship gives you a raw faceful every day of the structural injustice and endemic heartlessness of our society. You work with people who have been failed by society in every possible way. Deliberately, methodically. Then kicked when they’re down. The “digital divide” just exacerbated that over the last thirty years. Requiring computer literacy and expensive technology from people who were functionally illiterate, the first of the many ways society failed them. Having to go online to apply for a job at Walmart. It isn’t right. The public library has been the finger in the dike of that flood of injustice all along.

The year of the pandemic, I had a health crisis of my own, and when early retirement was offered as a cost saving measure for city government, I took it. So I could turn my attention to writing. Before I died.

Art Is Not a Luxury. It’s a Spell.

I pulled an Oracle card today, from the World Shamans Oracle, and the card was Orpheus. The tragic, mad poet-sage who could move the stones to weep with his song. Appropriate since I was going to work on this very blog post. The guidebook says, “Poetry is a form of shamanism that takes place in language; each word acquires value in the verses and has the power to re-enchant the world.”



That’s what I’m trying to do, why my writing feels as much a spiritual practice to me as creativity. Re-enchant the world. Western culture is absolutely desperate to re-enchant the world. I state that in my Artist’s Statement: I write “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. ”

In times like these, art is not just entertainment or a luxury. Not an escape. It is resistance. It is survival. Do you remember how desperately we clung to art through the Covid pandemic lockdown? It was the only thing that got us through. Shows, comedy, music. Even baking bread like it was a blessed sacrament. That is what I learned from the pandemic: art is non-negotiable.

Art is life.

The Power of Naming

If shamans are healers, I’m not a healer of bodies, but of meaning. Telling stories that help bind up the wounds of civilization. The Pono Way is about solarpunk, DIY resistance to imperialism and the dangers of xenophobia. Even people who don’t like the book get the message. Daughter of Atlas is about the collapse of imperialism and the danger of ecological destruction. Majestic Seventeen is turning out to be about facing down systems of power, control, and belief. Yes, they’re all adventure speculative fiction, but I hope they’re more than just that.

My Lane is the Highway

I reference this more in my post My Lane is the Highway. I don’t need to write to put food on the table. I can let my ideas expand, experiment with different forms, different shades in the prism of speculative fiction. I write to entertain people but also make them think. Before anything new arises in the world, someone has to imagine it. I can do that.

The world we have now didn’t arise from natural selection or the invisible hand of the market. It was deliberately made, and it is working as intended. Extracting wealth and blood from the masses to gorge the billionaires. It can be unmade. All this suffering isn’t necessary. We can do better.

A Closing Incantation

So I write, because it is one thing I can control, and contribute, when the world is collapsing around me. Even at the end of empires, life still goes on. People still work and earn money. They still need entertainment. Spec Fic has always been a Trojan horse to sneak in new ideas, on the pages of pulp magazines and the panels of comic books.

My pen is my wand. My book is my spell. I sing for a better world. Creating something when the world is falling down is an act of defiant hope.

So what do you sing? What is your spell? How are you going to re-enchant the world? It needs you to dream a new dream, now more than ever. Join me.

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!

0

Nanowrimo 2023

So I’m grinding away of my current book, Majestic Seventeen, 1000 words a day. I really hope to get it done by the end of the year (but I don’t want to overpromise.) But it’s November, National Novel Writing Month, why not join up and have the camaraderie of other Wrimos while you push through to the end? The daily quota is only 1227 words a day, I can do that!

So I surfed over the the Nano website and set up my novel and freshened up my profile. I’ve been doing Nanowrimo for years, 8 or 9 times, won four or five, about a 50 percent win rate. (Two of those losses were when we had deaths in the family, though, which really knocked me off my stride.) Some of those books I haven’t looked at since I uploaded them to the Nano website for validation at the end of November. One of them I lost to Hurricane Katrina (yes, been doing it that long.). But one of them became Daughter of Atlas, the first book I published, available here.

But it’s been a while since I’ve done it, and I forgot a few things. The daily quota to make 50,000 words in a month is 1667 words a day. Rather more than I thought. And that includes working every day. I’ve been taking weekends off lately. Writing is a job, you deserve time off. 1,000 words a day is a lot to me.

But that’s okay. The point of Nanowrimo is to push yourself, to make yourself work, to push through creative blocks. If I can just get this damn first draft finished by December 31, 2023 I will count it a success.

I lost all my Wrimo buddies on the Nano website, probably during a website upgrade. My handle over the is Kbot, all the way back from when I was still working shitty customer service jobs. So if you’re a WordPress denizen and you’re also doing Nano, hit me up. I need buddies!

And now I must return to the word mines. But I’m counting this blog post in the daily quota! 🙂

0

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.

0

This Can’t Go On

After Hurricane Ida last month, our power went out for, it turns out, a whole week. The eight major transmission lines for the city of New Orleans and suburbs went through one single decrepit tower, which collapsed under the storm, draping the lines into the Mississippi River and leaving the whole region without power for days.

After a late-summer hurricane it always becomes extremely hot. The storm sucks up all the moisture over the Gulf of Mexico and precipitates it, so after the storm passes, the sky is clear and the sun in August or September is absolutely brutal. And with the power out, no AC. People die in these circumstances. My husband couldn’t handle the heat, so we decamped to his parent’s house north of Baton Rouge. Their power was out for less than a day.

“We can’t keep doing this, ” I said as we drove north, skirting Lake Pontchartrain, the water and sky a vista of blue.

“We can go to my sister’s if we can’t go to Mom’s next time,” he said.

“No,” I said, “I mean Louisiana! This is going to keep happening. These storms that spin up from nothing to a Category 4 or 5 in 48 hours. That’s not enough time to prepare. To evacuate.”

“Nope,” he said.

“And we can’t keep cleaning up these messes. My God, all the power going through one tower, what the hell! It’s climate change. These storms are going to keep happening. We need to harden this place, south Louisiana. We can’t keep getting caught with our pants down. Spending billions of dollars we don’t have for recovery.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. Louisiana is a very poor and red state.

“It has to! Somehow.” I looked at the marsh grasses beside the lake, shining in the sun, ideas tumbling in my head. “Maybe I should write a book about it.”

“You just did!” he said.

I did, sort of. Climate change and the ensuing havoc are part of the backstory of THE PONO WAY, an integral part of the character’s lives. The very first page mentions how coffee, real coffee, has become a scarce and expensive luxury. The second page lists a litany of chaos and destruction that is the normal course of events “two centuries into the Anthropocene era of mass extinction and climate change.” The destruction of the environment is part of the background tenor of everyday life in Pono, my island state. It’s largely why Pono was created (it’s an artificial sea-steading) and why many of its inhabitants migrated there, to escape the instability of the mainlands. Including my protagonist, Jake Weintraub.

But the Ponoans come to discover that even a thousand miles of ocean can’t really protect them from the danger and dysfunction of the broken, corrupt remnants of North America forever.

So yes, calling attention to climate change and its ensuing disasters is part of why I wrote that book. Part of why I write at all. My last book was about an epic, civilization-ending apocalypse too. [Daughter of Atlas: A Novel of the Fall of Atlantis, if you haven’t read it yet. 😉 ] And that, too, was caused by unchecked human greed and pillaging of the earth.

It’s important to me. Society has been talking about ecological collapse and doing nothing about it for my entire lifetime. This is my way of doing something.

But there’s more yet to write. I was imagining a story where a bunch of solarpunk misfits take over Baton Rouge and turn it into a green, sustainable, New New Orleans. Baton Rouge is as far north as the Mississippi is safely navigable for the huge container ships that provide so much of Louisiana’s revenue. Far enough north that it won’t be under water in a hundred years. It is the state capitol and a university town, home of LSU, my alma mater. It’s the logical place to migrate to.

Because we will have to migrate, one day. Everyone in south Louisiana. I hope it’s done in a just and peaceful manner. Instead of some kind of Mad Max land rush.

To make something happen, you first have to imagine it.

That’s what I do. You can help me by reading my books, yeah? 😉

0

You Just Have to Do It, Part the Second

 

 

Cover1

 

When I was shouldering my way into Geek Fest, April, one of my colleagues, encouraged me to donate a few copies of my book to the library, so that attendees could check them out.  Which is something I always intended to do, but never got around to, because of my shyness.  Another way I just “had to do it,” as Alys Arden said, but didn’t.

But with April’s encouragement, I did, and the cataloging department kindly had them ready in time for Geek Fest.

Of course, I earmarked a copy for my own branch that I manage.

That’s it above. One of my staff members put it on display. They were excited to finally see it.

“They could make a movie out of this!” my coworker Belami said.

(I think so too, but find the possibility unlikely.)

And now, all three copies of my book are checked out and there is even a waiting list!  I have to tell you, that makes you feel like a real author.

It was lovely to receive this support from my coworkers.  It’s encouraging.

That’s the thing about “just having to do it,” — it’s not all nerves and anguish.  It can be good too. You get support.  There are rewards. (Besides, you know, selling books.)   This is what I learned from this.

And the more you do it, the easier it gets.

So, if you are an indie author like me, you might look into donating a few copies of a book to your local library.  Particularly the first book in a series, if you have one.  It’s another way for people to discover your work.  If they like it well enough, they may be moved to buy your subsequent books.

If you work exclusively with e-books, you might look into the SELF-e platform libraries use.  Again, it’s a donation, but it’s a way to get noticed.

It’s up to the inclinations of individual libraries and librarians whether they collect indie authors or not.  Some libraries are very supportive of their local authors. Some are not.  But it can’t hurt to offer.

DON’T, however, try to sneak in a purchase request for your books as if you were just a regular patron.  We librarians can always tell, it smacks of desperation, and it just pisses us off.  Be above board and donate a few copies if you can.  If nothing else, they will go to the library book sale. You will get noticed and help the library earn a couple dollars.

 

0

You Just Have to Do It

I had a great time at the Geek Fest down at Main Library Saturday.  I sat on an author’s panel, and we had a really good talk, “Can Science Fiction inspire change in the real world?” (Spoiler: Yes.)

Geekpanel
Left to right, authors Claudia Gray, Brandon Black, Maurice Ruffin, myself, Zach Bartlett, moderator.

 

I met bestselling author Maurice Ruffin, author of WE CAST A SHADOW:

 

GeekMaurice

 

Alys Arden was running the Tubby & Coo’s table, and she hand-sold my book! (Or tried to anyway.)

 

GeelAlys

 

Alys was a real team player Saturday, helping out and supporting other authors, like having an impromptu panel with Bryan Camp:

 

GeekPanel2

 

Big shout out to Alys, whose third book in the Casquette Girls series, The Cities of Dead, just came out.  I appreciated her support Saturday.

Bryan’s second book, Gather the Fortunes, sequel to The City of Lost Fortunes, comes out later this month!

So I did have a really great time.  But the thing is, I had to force myself to do it.  Represent myself as an author allied with the library, who deserved to be there.

I have real issues with marketing my work.  I’m so introverted and socially avoidant, I quail at the thought of putting myself or my work out there, even if it’s just online. God forbid actually in public in front of real people.

But you have to do it.  No one’s going to read your books if they don’t know they’re there.

When my book was first published, I asked Alys, “How do you make yourself market your book?”

And she said, “You just have to do it.  You just have to put yourself out there.  It’s hard. But you just do it, and it gets easier.”

Well, I struggled and avoided it for a long time, but when I learned of Geek Fest, I thought, I have to be involved in this.  I thought, Hey, why aren’t I on that panel?

So I talked to the organizers, some of my colleagues at Main Library, and said, “Hey, I want to be on that panel at Geek Fest.”  And they said okay.

And it went well.  And there are rewards too:

 

GeekBethany

 

This is Bethany.  She came up to me after the panel.  I thought she was going to give me grief for trash-talking Laurel K. Hamilton.  (An unpopular opinion.)

But no. She said, “I’m Bethany. I work with your husband.  He gave me your book to read, and I loved it!”

Wow! My first time hearing from a fan out in the field. What an incredible moment.  Isn’t this why we write at all? To reach people, to be heard? Thank you, Bethany!

“She said, “I just wanted you to know.”  I offered her one of my cards with this website on it, and she said, “I have one, Sam gave it to me.”  So, hi Bethany! Great to meet you!  We talked about my follow-on book to Daughter of Atlas, which isn’t a straight sequel, but shows what happens elsewhere when Atlantis falls.  Which Bethany said was what she was curious about in a sequel. So that was wildly encouraging.

They say that’s the way indie authors build their fan base, one reader at a time.  The only way you can do that is by reaching out to them, both on and off-line.

So, if you are struggling with marketing your books, don’t be afraid.  If I can do it, anyone can do it.  Go ahead and shoulder yourself onto a panel at your local sci-fi con.  You never know who you might meet.

 

1

SPFBO Update

The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off has reached its finals: the blogger/reviewers have chosen their 10 finalists, and all will read all to determine the winner.  Read about it here.

My book is not among them.  In fact it was cut during the first round of eliminations.

Ouch. That hurt.  But I have to admit that I seriously overestimated my chances on this thing.  There are many, many authors entered in the Blog-Off that are far more experienced than me.

The mini-reviw of my book on Team Weatherwax is here.  The reviewer (not sure who) said Daughter of Atlas has “pacing issues.”  Ugh.  That’s hard to hear. But no else who’s ever read or reviewed it (that I know of) has ever said that, so I guess it’s a matter of opinion.

My biggest disappointment from being cut so early, though, is that DoA didn’t get a cocktail made to memorialize it by Book Wol of Tome & Tankard.  I was so looking forward to that. There is a general cocktail for all the early losers here.

One thing I have noticed, is that most (I think eight out of ten) of the finalist books have more “painterly” covers than your usual indie-published books, with their Photoshopped covers.  It looks like the authors paid to have artists actually paint cover paintings for their books, or at least composit them in a more illustrative style than the usual photorealistic , CGI’d indie covers we are used to.  It makes the books more “professional” looking, that is, more like commercially published books.  It probably contributes a positive halo effect to the books.  They are appropriate to the genre, fantasy, and are what readers expect to see.

(Not that I am displeased by the cover of my book, or having second thoughts. I love the cover of DoA, and I have always received positive feedback from it. But it is something to keep in mind for future works.)

Author and YouTube book vlogger Quinn Buckland gave DoA a stellar review here.  Check it out. Thanks Quinn!

My interview by Michael Baker of the Thousand Scars Muse blog is here.  I did see a small sales spike from that, thank you Michael.

And I have a new review on GoodReads from XDesoto, here.

Well, there’s always next time.  My forthcoming book is science fiction, so I can’t enter SPFBO with that, but I will return to fantasy and to my series Atlantis Fallen in the future, so hopefully one day I will be able to enter the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off again.

Does anyone know if there is a similar contest for indie sci-fi?

Finally, let me extend my thanks to Mark Lawrence, who founded the Blog-Off, and to all the bloggers and reviewers, who are putting in an incredible amount of work on their own time, for love of reading and the genre, and also to all my fellow authors.  Good luck to all the finalists!

0

SPFBO 4 Begins!

Several of the authors, myself included, are running a 99c price promo. Check it out:

 

 

Author Ann Woodley created this video. Thanks, Ann!

Participating author Andrea Domanski put together this list of the participating authors.

M. D. Presley put together a tournament bracket for the blog-off, so readers can follow along, here.  Hah, that should be fun!

The SPFBO has a Facebook page, which seems like a good place to stay up on the action.

I only learned about SPFBO in the final rounds of the last contest, so I’m really not sure how all this is going to play out.  We will experience it together.  Fingers crossed!

0

SPFBO 4 Starts Tomorrow!

The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, Round 4, starts tomorrow, Wednesday, August 1.  I’m sure many of us authors are nervous and excited.

To celebrate, many of the participating authors, myself included, are dropping the price of their ebooks to 99 cents from August 1 through 5, to allow fans and readers to follow along and purchase as many of the entry books as possible.  Thanks to author Andrea Domanski who put this whole effort together!

You can find all the discounted books here at her website:  http://www.andreadomanski.com/spfbo

Of course, you can purchase my submission, Daughter of Atlas, here, as always.

Daughter of Atlas was assigned to the Team Weatherwax review team, and Bookwol of Tome & Tankard is already reading it!  Hm, hope that doesn’t mean I get eliminated early.  We’ll have to see, I guess.

Good luck to all the authors, and a huge thank you to all the reviewing book bloggers for putting in this huge amount of work, for love of the genre and indie publishing. And especially to author Mark Lawrence, who created the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off four years ago.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑