Page-a-day Book Release of Mechalarum

I haven't always been the best at keeping this blog updated. A regular font of information needs to have a source, and I've been too interested in jumping around to consistently produce words of wisdom for my audience.

However, the upcoming release of my debut novel changed that. Now I have a focus, something to dedicate my energies towards, and best of all, a simple, straightforward plan for posting once a day.

My novel Mechalarum is scheduled to release on October 9, 2014. In the meantime, it will be available for pre-order on Amazon.

Until then, I'll be releasing the first few chapters a page at a time in image form on my Mechalarum blog. Head there to see the latest posts! 

Interview with Alex Shvartsman on Community Days

Welcome to another great Community Days interview!

My guest today is Alex Shvartsman, a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. He's sold nearly 50 short stories since late 2010, to such venues as The Journal of Nature, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy's Edge, among others. He's best-known for humorous short stories.

In 2012 Alex edited and published Unidentified Funny Objects -- an anthology of humorous SF/F which featured stories by Mike Resnick, Lavie Tidhar, Jody Lynn Nye, and Ken Liu, among others. It was well-received by readers and critics alike. Alex is running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the second in what he hopes will become an annual anthology series: Unidentified Funny Objects.

Tell us a little bit about your inspiration for the Unidentified Funny Objects collection. How did it reflect your previous experience as a writer and editor?

Much of what I write is humorous science fiction and fantasy short stories. I submit them to what markets appreciate that sort of thing, but there are many established and well-respected magazines and anthologies that do not. So it cuts down the list of viable professional markets from over a dozen to just a handful. I always found this frustrating and wished that somebody would create a regular outlet for SF/F humor (I firmly believe there are plenty of readers interested in such stories). So you could say that I was inspired to create the market I always wanted to exist. And when I researched humor anthologies, I found that nothing similar to Unidentified Funny Objects had been published, at least not during the course of the last decade. I became even more convinced that there's a niche need that my project could fill.

Shooting the Video for the Mechalarum Kickstarter Project

Helping to create the video for my Mechalarum Kickstarter project was the first time I'd been involved in creating a visual experience to get people absorbed in my fictional universe, so it was quite an interesting experience! Sure, like pretty much everyone nowadays, I'd messed around with taking video with my point-and-shoot camera, and laughed at how goofy my friends or my dog could be. But that hardly qualifies me as an expert in communicating through a moving picture medium.

Luckily, I had a connection through my roommate to videographer Bryan Swormstedt, who had worked on four Kickstarter videos in the past. I wanted to do something a little different with my Kickstarter video, and he really helped me bring my vision to life.

I didn't want to have people simply acting out a scene from the book, as it might give the impression that I was creating a movie, instead of a novel. And I wanted to get viewers engaged with the visceral emotions of the struggle to join with a symbiotic mechanical/organic being.

However, it turns out that the actual act of capturing moving images on camera is only a little sliver of putting together a cohesive video!

Above, you can see one of our actresses Sylvana Tapia helping set up the lighting for the dance scene. Since the first part of Mechalarum is set in the desert, we wanted to get a warm tone (and also wanted to dim the insanely bright halogen lamps I picked up at Home Depot for the purpose). You can see how the lighting really created a completely different atmosphere, even though we shot in Bryan's living room!

$1000 Goal Reached, New Art, Article Announced

Happy dance time! So thrilled to announce the reaching of a milestone amount: $1000! Thank you so much to everyone who pledged, shared, and gave me your support :) Also, just goes to show how well goal-setting works!

AND if that's not cool enough, I have some awesome preview artwork for the jewelry reward level that I'll be offering:

AND I've got an awesome new post up on Rob D. Young's blog called 7 Writing-Based Ways to Fund Your Fiction. How much awesome stuff can happen in one day?

Hope you like :) Don't forget to check out my Kickstarter page for more info!

Want to read previous updates? Check out:

Gunning for $1000 Milestone!

Mechalarum Kickstarter Launch Party Was a Success!

Five Years Later... Time To Publish?

In February of 2008 I published my first blog post, in which I talked about getting ready to write my very first fantasy novel.

Five years, five (drafts of) novels, and several very long hiatuses later, I'm finally ready to come full circle. Yep, that's right - I'm going to self-publish for the first time, and officially get some of this written stash out into the world at large!

But wait, there's more! I've decided to use Kickstarter to fund the publication process. I'm committing fully to this endeavor, and I don't want to leave anything to chance. I'm raising money to hire an awesome editor, get some great visual talent on board, and really make as big of a deal of this as I'm able to.

Crowdfunding a novel is not an easy task, but luckily, I'm not going it alone. I'm already building the foundation for a great team, including some awesome people who are going to be helping me put on local events in New York and hosting me on their sites and blogs over the course of the project.

Interested in climbing on board? Head over to my website and drop me a line on my contact form.

As if that weren't enough fun news, yesterday I got "chucked" by the wonderful team at Knodes. You can read about it - and see me mugging for the camera in our office - here: Emma Gets Chucked :D

Stay tuned for lots of exciting stuff to come! And if you're in or near the NYC area, keep February 25 open on your calendars. I'll be posting info for the launch party here soon!