Tag: analog

Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I mentioned before here and here, my short story “Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Specialists”, originally published in the March/April issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, is on the Sir Julius Vogel Award ballot for best novella or novelette, and also is on the ballot for Analog’s Analytical Laboratory (voted for by readers). The Analog final results come out in mid-June, I think, but the SJVs voting is on now, with the award ceremony happening at Concatenation con in Wellington over Easter (Kudos too for the organisers of the con, pulling together something out of almost nothing – great work).

If you’re a member of Concatenation, or SFFANZ, you have voting rights, so you can access the stories through the finalists page.

They’re also available to read for free on the Analog (Daisy and Maisie) and Asimov’s (Wildest Skies) websites, through until those respective awards are announced.

But, to add to that, “Daisy and Maisie…” is available from the website now as an ebook for $2.99. Just for reading here, you can use the code DandM50 to get it for fifty percent off. Not enough. Okay. Use the code DandM100 to get it 100% off (that is, free). I can’t go any higher than that, otherwise I’m giving you money 😁. I’ll leave these codes valid through until June 15th.

The print book version will be available soon. It looks grand. Link coming when all the details are in place.

 

Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts

Chuck Grimshaw works hard in the gruelling environment orbiting Mars. Long days fixing broken equipment, on a worn out ship, in a stinky spacesuit.

His two robot helpers, Daisy and Maisie, make things bearable. Never short of a wry observation or a correction to Grimshaw’s work habits.

When disaster strikes, Grimshaw finds they have more talents than just quips and repairs.

But do they have the skills to help him survive?

 

Grab it now! Use the discount! Do a little dance!

Thank you.

Award Season…

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Now that the official announcement has been made, I can add in here to two of my stories from 2024 are finalists on a couple more award ballots. Both “Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts” (Analog, March/April 2024) and “Wildest Skies” (Asimov’s November/December 2024) are up for those magazines’ awards.

“Daisy and Maisie…” for Analog’s Analytical Laboratory Award, and “Wildest Skies” for Asimov’s Readers’ Poll. There are a lot of familiar names in those lists, and I’m humbled to be among them.

The announcements of the winners for both will come with the July/August issues (out in mid-June), but in the meantime, you can read the stories for free at award pages – the links here will take you to them – and most of the other finalists are available there too. That’s a whole mess of great reading. There are some spectacular stories there. Enjoy.

These awards are kind of my favorites because they’re voted for by the actual readers of the magazines. I’ve been a finalist before in the Asimov’s Readers’ Poll, for “The Molenstraat Music Festival” (which placed fourth equal as best novelette of 2015), “Goldie” (which placed second as best novella of 2022) and “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles” (which won for best short story of 2017). This is the first time I’ve been a finalist for the Analog Analytical Laboratory, though I’ve had numerous stories there over the last few years.

While I’m jabbering on, I do have more Asimov’s and Analog stories forthcoming – “Can You Outrun A T-Rex” in the November/December Asimov’s, and “Ready For New Arrivals” in the July/August Analog.

But I digress. Both “Wildest Skies” and “Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts” are also finalists in the Best Novella/Novelette category in New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards, in the same category, though, which makes me feel a little like I’m up against myself, ha, ha. And both are also on the long list (i.e. nominated) for Australia’s Aurealis Award. More details on that one to come. Hoping that they might make the shortlist.

“Wildest Skies” was a fun story to write too, and stimulated a whole lot of other stories with the characters and situations, with more to come. See www.wildestskies.com with those stories there.

Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts – Award Ballots

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My short story “Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts”, originally published in the March/April issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, is on the Sir Julius Vogel Award ballot for best novella or novelette. Now, I call it a short story, but there are technical lengths for awards and the cutoff for short stories is 7,500 words… “Daisy and Maisie…” is 7,600 words. That pushes it to novelette length.

That’s all well and fine, I’m thrilled to be nominated and to make it onto the finalist ballot.

Interesting side note, my 22,000 word novella “Wildest Skies” is also on the same ballot, so I’m kind of competing with myself, with stories of very different lengths.

Again, no complaints. Not at all. I’ve been on the ballots before, and even won once, but it’s been a while. All you nice people who’ve been reading the stories have been kind enough to consider them award-worthy and to nominate them.

Thank you, thank you. It’s very appreciated.

I have friends in other categories too – Lee Murray for Best Collected work, and Best Cover for her wonderful Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud and Mel Harding-Shaw for her novel Echoes of Earthshine and also (as Melanie Harding-Shaw) for her article “Your Guide to New Zealand Fantasy Romance Novels Coming in 2024”

A full list of the finalists can be found here on the Sir Julius Vogel Awards Finalists 2025 page.

The competition will be tight, and because of other commitments I will miss the awards ceremony in April. Wish me luck, but also best of luck to the other nominees Just not in my category 😉

“Daisy and Maisie…” will be out as a standalone story in ebook and print very soon. What do you think of the cover? This is the blurb.

Daisy and Maisie, External Hull Maintenance Experts, blurb

Chuck Grimshaw works hard in the gruelling environment orbiting Mars. Long days fixing broken equipment, on a worn out ship, in a stinky spacesuit.

His two robot helpers, Daisy and Maisie, make things bearable. Never short of a wry observation or a correction to Grimshaw’s work habits.

When disaster strikes, Grimshaw finds they have more talents than just quips and repairs.

But do they have the skills to help him survive?

Single Point Failure – New story in Analog Science Fiction and Fact

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

The July/August issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact is out now, and includes my novelette “Single Point Failure”

Full list of contents here – cool to see that I’m sharing that with another New Zealander – Melanie Harding-Shaw. Kind of humbled to be there alongside her – Mel is one of the shining lights of the NZ Speculative Fiction Scene..

Available from Amazon and elsewhere.

My Aurealis Award Finalist novella from Analog last year, “Problem Landing” is now also available as a standalone in print and as an ebook. Universal Book Link here.

Toughing out life on Mars, Ciananti Burrows finds herself constantly repairing failing equipment and pushing research aside. But when new arrivals declare an issue with their landing vessel, all those learned repair skills might come in handy.

They might even save some lives.

For some reason I seem to give my protagonists names beginning with C – Ciananti, Cody, Cole Wright.

July will see the release of Cole Wright book 4, Slow Burn, available for pre-order now – UBL. By way of promotion, again, we’ll have a short story – “The Handler” available to read free here on the website from the start of July (the 4th), then available as a standalone book and in print.

The Handler –

The mugging happens so fast that Marc barely has time to react.

For Marc and Sonia, a trip to Spokane means visiting family, a little shopping and some eating out. Not having someone accost them in the street.

When Cole Wright happens by, things might just take a different turn.

In other Cole Wright news, happily the work is complete on book 5, Scorpion Bait and it’s heading into preorder for September 20th. And, yes, there will be another short story free to read in the lead up from around the start of that month.

I’m having fun writing the Cole Wright short stories too, so will likely put out a collection of the five, plus a couple of extras in October or November. If I can ever figure out how to set up a mail list, I’ll be giving away another story for sign ups.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading.

Ten Years of Writing Every Day

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

On January 1st 2012 I gave myself the challenge to write every day. I’m a writer, after all, so that seems like nothing too challenging.

Over the years, though, despite writing lots, I would still miss some days, perhaps even some weeks. I doubt I missed a month, but maybe somewhere I did.

Still, I didn’t have that regular habit. Today, as I write this, December 31st 2021, marks the ten year milestone. 3653 days (by my calculations – I think there were three leap years in there, 2012, 2016 and 2020) of writing every day.

As part of the challenge, I recorded my word count. Some days I wrote not very much (156 words was, I think my lowest number), some days a little more (one day was over 8000 words), but most days sat somewhere north of 1000. Most years were somewhere over 500,000 words. This last year I set myself the additional goal of writing a minimum of 1600 words a day – and I hit that, for a total of 652,682 words (which is actually over 1700 words/day average – kind of what happens when you set the bar higher, I guess). Not bad. Still not quite up to real pulp speed.

One thing that kept it engaging was the thought that ‘it’s all practice’. Just practising getting better. Practising openings, practising characterization, practising the rule of threes (see what I did there?). With practice, I would hope to get better.

Along the way I’ve published a lot of my works indie – links to a lot of them are here on the website – and gone wide, so you can find me on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Smashwords and Apple.

The big sense that the practising was working, though, came when I started selling to the professional magazines – Asimov’s, Analog, Landfall, etc. Maybe I was getting better. Some writers get there real fast, but for me it’s been more of a matter staying the course. Submitting. Learning to write better. Submitting again. I still want to get better, of course. I have a bunch of courses lined up and a bunch of new goals.

The challenge continues. Writing every day. Aiming now to make it to 10,000 consecutive days. That would be something. But still, 3653 is something in itself.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year.

 

 

New New New, finally

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve probably mentioned before that while I’m a relatively prolific writer, and probably not too bad at it either (a couple of awards along the way, so I must be doing something right on occastion), I can a little tardy at keeping this site up to date. What happens then is things build up and I end up jabbering about a half dozen things every couple of months, rather than one every week.

Hoping to change that. Maybe I’ll even schedule it. After all, I write fiction every day, why not talk about it every week? Similarly, I need to keep that sidebar, that’s probably showing on the right there, a little more current. And the pages links at the top.

Anyway, there are bits and pieces of news about new releases.

analog cover march april 2021My novelette “Problem Landing” appeared in the March/April issue of Analog, which was kind of cool. This story comes from watching footage of the SpaceX rocket boosters making their landings for re-use. The story, though, is set on Mars.

I have another story coming out sometime later this year in Analog – “Eyes To The Height”. Again, a failing technology story, this one set on the moon.

Yay for space.

Analog also have their own blog – The Astounding Analog Companion – and I have an interview in that, about “Problem Landing”. That came out quite a few weeks back. There are other good interviews and opinion pieces on the blog too.

I have a new book out – Core Runners – book 5 in the Captain Arlon Stoddard series. Available in all the usual places. The blurb goes like this:

Core runners 19 2 21 ebook“A missing ship. A distressed mother. A planet of mysteryThe disappearance of the Astro Astoria challenges the capabilities of Captain Arlon Stoddard and his crew in new and desperate ways.Finding the ship, and the familes aboard takes every resource the have.And More.Another thrilling installment in the exciting Captain Arlon Stoddard series.Space adventure at its best.”

Core Runners is available in print and as an ebook from the usual retailers – check here to grab a copy. Paperback is $9.99, ebook is $3.99.

Book 6 – Underworld Climbers – should be out in June. The copy-editing is complete, just need formatting and to organise the cover.

Blast Crater 2 4 21 ebookIn the meantime, another book in the middle-grade Matti-Jay and Dub Adventures series – Blast Crater on Endemo – comes out on May 20th. This is standalone, as all my series books are (as in, you can read them in any order), but it does chronologically follow on from last year’s Great Wall of Endemo, so if you’ve read that you might enjoy this one as a continuation.

This is the blurb for Blast Crater on Endemo:

“Filled with exotic wonderful sights, Endemo ranks as one of the most mysterious worlds in all of Ao space. With some time off after the challenging events at the Great Wall, Matti-Jay and her crew pay a visit to the stunning ancient crater in the northern reaches. Surrounded by gorgeous scenery, none of them expect bandits and crooks.But the crater holds secrets. Holds them close.Faced with impossible choices Matti-Jay and Dub dig into every resource they have. The crater gives no second chances.Another thrilling adventure in the Matti-Jay and Dub series, from award-winning author Sean Monaghan.”

vv cfLastly, for now, I have a new Venus Vulture EP out on bandcamp. “Crystal Falls” is a suite of three tracks of gritty, drone ambient. This is my first real release of music made with my modular synthesizer system. Previously I’ve worked with FLStudio, Oscilab, paulstretch and GoldWave, among others, to put together music. It’s quite a different experience working in the analog world, and doing more actual playing of the instrument, rather than clicking on the screen.

I’ve been building the system for the last couple of years, and it’s been something of a learning curve. Maybe that’ll be a good topic for one of those every week posts.

Crystal Falls is available on Bandcamp – $5.00 for the download. You can listen online for free.

Well, thanks for reading this far.  Right now I’m working on a new SF novel (which might end up just being a novella), then want to do some more short stories, and then some more thrillers. Later this year I’ll be repackaging my existing thrillers with new covers, and launching a new series. More on that to come, but there are three novels written so far – I should have two out before Christmas, with the third in January. Fair chance I can write and prep another before then, so there might be four of them by March next year.

Take care.

“One Hundred” – a new story in Analog

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

AFF_Mar2020_400x570

The March/April issue of Analog Science Fact Science Fiction includes my story “One Hundred” about a colony on Mars.

Let me tell you that this is just way exciting for me. Not only is this Analog’s 90th year (!), but it’s also my debut in its pages.

I’ve had quite a few stories in Asimov’s Science Fiction over the last few years, which has been pretty, pretty cool for me, but Analog is another thing. I tend to play fast and loose with the laws of physics and the arrival of aliens and so on, and sometimes the science takes a little back seat in my stories. That’s made Asimov’s kind of a natural home for them.

Analog readers do want real science in their stories. So “One Hundred” fits right in there. Mars is on our minds right now, with Space X’s short-ish goal of putting people up there, and NASA’s longer term goal of doing likewise.

That whole “Planet B” concept is gaining traction. Especially in the face of a climate that’s delivering terrible fires, ferocious hurricanes and tides that keep on getting higher. And with the looming threat of pandemic very currently on our minds, creating another spot to live and breed might be a pretty sound idea.

I’m honored to have my story among such luminaries as Gregory Benford and C.C. Finlay.

Living, as I do, across the far side of planet Earth, I have to wait for shipping for my copy to arrive. I’ll probably do that thing of posting an image of me holding it when it gets here.

Fabulous skiesIn other news, “Fabulous Skies” another short story, will be out on Saturday from Triple V Publishing, my little indie venture. $2.99 for the ebook. Different to “One Hundred”, but I guess I do have a style of writing.

Also, I continue to post on ProWritersWriting.com, weekly on a Monday morning. If you’re a writer and want to get a sense of my take on the writing process, go check the posts out. Of note is that there are a bunch of other writers posting there (new posts daily), and we do have different takes. It’s a great resource for starting writers.

Have a great day, and thanks for reading. I appreciate it.

Almost there with The Stairs at Cronnenwood

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Stairs at Cronenwood (1)The second book in my Morgenfeld series should be out on December 15th, all going well. As I speak the book has been proofed and copy-edited and print-formatted. Just need to finish the wraparound cover design for that, and get the ebook formatting done.

Oh, and write a blurb.

Here’s how things go for me in terms of writing, from easiest to hardest: novel, novella, short story, blog post, “short bio to accompany your story” and blurb. Yup, easier to write a 60,000 word novel than to write a 100 word blurb. I’ve done some work on it, taken a course or two and so I know some of the techniques – focus on the character and the problem, give away nothing more than is in the first chapter, use active language, and so on and so on. All seems very straightforward when you put it like that. Ha, ha.

I have to write my blurbs on a different computer from my writing computer. The tone and technique and parts of the brain used are all so different. Getting away from the creative space seems to give me access to a different kind of creativity, namely pretending to be a sales person.

Sales is not my natural bent. So, I practice. Maybe I’ll get something that works this time. I’ll post the blurb here in a week or two, once I’ve got it down. Or maybe just whatever I have at that point.

I am fortunate that I’ve been able to organise a space and a clunky old computer dedicated just to writing. No net, no games, no anything except the writing software. Easier to separate out that creative side from the business side.

Also in the works, getting the updated cover for the first in the series –  The Map Maker of Morgenfeld. In the year or so since that came out I’ve learned some about cover design. Long way to go, but I like these new versions. Grandfailure’s images just so suit the work, the broken-down jumble of the city and the sense of space and light and time.

In other, related new, I’m just about finished with the writing of book three in the series. Right now the title is just  Black Chimneys, but I do have a while to consider that, and to look for something with more rhythm closer to the other two, as in  The (something) of/at (somewhere).

Also recently sold a couple of stories, one to  Asimov’s, one to  Analog. Excited about both, but this will be my first in  Analog, and it’s always neat to see my work in a new venue. I’ll post again when I have the publication dates for those.

Since I’m rambling on, I’ll mention that I’ll be at WorldCon in Wellington next year – the World Science Fiction Convention. I’m in the process of putting my name forward to maybe be on a panel or two. If you’re going and we haven’t met, grab me and say hi.