March is Women’s History Month, something that gets more important to me as I (and my daughter) get older.
We’ve made progress as women, of course. Just check out all the amazing women’s history resources that can be found here.
But there’s still much work to be done. And it’s up to all of us to do it.
We start with our kids, of course. We’ve been careful to demonstrate to Nola since she was a baby that she can be and do whatever she wants.
When she was little, I didn’t surround her with all pink and girly things. I incorporated primary colors whenever I could. She had pink princess stuff, of course, but she also had red, blue, and green blocks and toy cars. She watched Sofia the First and Handy Manny.
As she got older, I let her choose where her interests would take her. She did T-ball one year and cheerleading the next. Now, she’s a green/brown belt in karate and a member of a girls volleyball tournament team. She’s also the lead villain in the high school musical and plays the tuba.
She’s a remarkably versatile kid, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
But it’s not just real-world people she can draw inspiration from. Fictional characters can open whole new worlds to young women who don’t have the same exposure and opportunities that my daughter does.
And it’s not just young women that fiction can inspire. I find myself gravitating more and more to strong female characters.
It’s why I love Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Diving Series so very much.
Her main female character, Boss, is seriously badass. (Kris, by the way, is pretty badass herself.) If you haven’t been introduced to Boss yet, start with Diving into the Wreck.
Here’s the synopsis:
Boss dives derelict space vessels, for money, yes, but more for their historical value. So, when she uncovers the find of a lifetime, she enlists the best divers she knows to help her pursue it—off the grid and under the Empire’s radar.
Boss’s discovery leads her and her team to the Room of Lost Souls. Boss remembers the Room. It haunts her. Her mother died there. Now, a client wants her to go back to help uncover the Room’s mysteries. But the truths they discover might destroy everything Boss holds sacred.
Because the more they discover, the less they realize they know—and the more it will cost them all.
An Asimov’s Readers’ Choice winner and RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice pick.
And if you’re already familiar with the series, but missed our recent Kickstarter, you can now preorder The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades. Boss isn’t in this one, but there are other badass women.
Here’s the synopsis:
The Renegat Renegades finally learn their fate in New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades, the gripping new novel in her award-winning Diving series.
As the surviving crew of the Renegat face court-martial for mutiny—100 years in their future—the case makes everyone nervous. Prosecutors worry the survivors will prove too sympathetic to convict. The defense worries about the reliability of the defendants. But the survivors worry about what might happen should the truth—the whole truth—finally come to light. Set in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s expansive Diving Universe, The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades adds rich new background to this powerfully written series.
With shocking secrets, a deepening mystery, and a surprise witness, this spellbinding sf mystery mixes the best of legal fiction and space opera and proves Rusch’s place as a master of science fiction.
A series of strange events happened last week. For the first time in my daughter’s life, she had an actual snow day. And honest to goodness snow day where you go out and play in the snow for hours. It was an amazing thing to behold.
We live on the Oregon Coast, so we don’t get snow much. When we do, it’s flurries, or, if it sticks, it’s like an inch, tops.
But this was a legit snowstorm. Almost six inches of snow. Enough to sled on. And miraculously, our neighbors had some sleds (from a vacation to snow country).
And it was enough to build a full-size snowman instead of the lego-size version.
So, while it was unexpected, sometimes the unexpected leads to wonderful new things.
Take Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Fey series. The original books were epic fantasy. But the new books are an unexpected but wonderful blend of fantasy and steampunk.
And thanks to release of The Kirilli Matter, the first new Fey novel in more than 20 years, you can experience just what I mean.
Gripping, imaginative, and a tour-de-force of thrilling storytelling, New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Kirilli Matter launches her acclaimed Fey series into exciting new territory.
When the investigation of a brutal murder scene points to terrifying suspects, Augusta Kirilli must find a way to protect her family’s secrets—secrets so long buried, she must discover their meaning or risk her own destruction. Set in the world of The Fey and masterfully blending fantasy and steampunk elements, Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Qavnerian Protectorate saga adds rich new dimension to this powerfully written series.
From its shocking opening to the deepening mystery at its conclusion, this groundbreaking novel takes epic fantasy in a whole new direction and proves Rusch’s place as the greatest storyteller of our time.
Click here to buy the ebook directly from our Shopify store or here for more options.
The whole Fey series has been republished with gorgeous new covers, so there’s never been a better time to get the whole series in paper!
In other news, The New Diving Novel Kickstarter has hit four stretch goals and is still climbing. And since we hit that fourth stretch goal, all backers at the $5 reward level and up will get a very special notebook filled with chapters pulled from the final version of The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades. I’ve read it, and it’s a fantastic look behind the scenes to the events that play out in the book.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, click here now. It ends this week!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
In case you don’t keep up with the news, we reached a tipping point with artificial intelligence recently. AI technology is spreading and accelerating at a pace I’ve not seen with technology since the advent of the internet. AI art creation, AI chat bots, AI-enhanced search engines… Heck, even my language learning app Duolingo just added an AI-enhanced tutorial model.
It feels a bit like we’ve just found ourselves 100 years in the future overnight. Or like we’re in a science fiction novel. Or both.
Which is ironic, because that’s exactly what happened to the crew of the Renegat in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s latest novel, The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades, which is the feature of our latest Kickstarter.
Every supporter of The New Diving Novel Kickstarter at the $5 level and up will get an early copy of The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades in ebook format.
Here’s the synopsis:
The Renegat Renegades finally learn their fate in New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades, the gripping new novel in her award-winning Diving series.
As the surviving crew of the Renegat face court-martial for mutiny—100 years in their future—the case makes everyone nervous. Prosecutors worry the survivors will prove too sympathetic to convict. The defense worries about the reliability of the defendants. But the survivors worry about what might happen should the truth—the whole truth—finally come to light. Set in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s expansive Diving Universe, The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades adds rich new background to this powerfully written series.
With shocking secrets, a deepening mystery, and a surprise witness, this spellbinding sf mystery mixes the best of legal fiction and space opera and proves Rusch’s place as a master of science fiction.
In addition to early access to this fantastic new novel, the Kickstarter also features Kickstarter exclusive rewards for readers and writers alike.
For readers, we have a reward for signed/limited hardcovers for the new novel as well as stretch goal rewards featuring three special notebooks full of cut chapters from this new novels and false starts and supplemental material from past books in the series.
For writers, we have three rewards featuring two special new workshops: Creating Science Fiction Technologies and How to Create Ships as Characters. And we’re launching a brand-new series of writing workshops in the stretch goals featuring Space-Cowboy Pete and Rocket-Fuel Rachel.
And we might even have a surprise or two up our sleeves we have yet to reveal.
Patrick Mahomes is a genius. Of this, I’m convinced. Watching him play is like watching a great artist. What he creates is breathtaking.
I grew up watching football, and it’s my second-favorite sport to watch (after baseball), but I’ve never been a die-hard sports fan. I always watch the Super Bowl, and since my husband is a huge fan, I watch it more now than I have at other times in my life.
And since John is a lifelong Chiefs fan, I watch Mahomes a lot. And he fascinates me.
I can see him working out puzzles in real time on the field. I’ve seen great players over the years, but watching him is different. He has a beautiful mind, and I love seeing it in action.
He reminds me somewhat of great writers who write into the dark (like our own Dean Wesley Smith). If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it means, in its simplest terms, that you write without an outline. You sit down, start writing, and go where the story takes you.
This takes skill, of course. You need to have the fundamentals in place and some great storytelling talent to write this way.
Just like Mahomes. Talent: check. Fundamentals: check. And then he goes out there each play and sees where the game (or the story) takes him. And he trusts that he’ll get somewhere good.
Sometimes, it doesn’t work out, of course. But he regroups and gets back to the process. Trusting himself and his ability to move the story forward.
Just like a great writer.
I spent the past week surrounded by great writers…and up-and-coming writers, and aspiring writers…at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado Springs, and I flew home on Super Bowl Sunday, so perhaps that’s what caused me to make the connection.
I also watched writer after writer thank Dean for his seminars on writing into the dark. It freed them. In one case, the writer said that it saved her career.
If you’re a writer, and this resonates with you, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean’s Teachable workshops on the subject. You can find them, and hundreds of other writing workshops, here.
Now that the Super Bowl is over, I won’t be able to watch Mahomes’ artistry again for a while. But at least I have plenty of other genius storytelling to experience in the meantime.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
We live in weird times. Technology is evolving so fast that it sometimes feels like magic.
I recently had a conversation with an author who wanted my take on the evolution of AI, particularly as it comes to the creation of prose (such as ChatGPT).
That’s a complicated topic. I’m not just a book publisher; I’m also a professor. I think AI text generation has its uses. I think it could be sure useful for helping people write cover letters, reference letters, business correspondence, that kind of thing. Especially for people who struggle with those.
But I recently took a test the New York Times originally posed to education experts (and the venerable Judy Blume) to see if they could tell the difference between a student’s writing and ChatGPT. And here’s the thing: I spotted the AI every single time. It wasn’t always easy, but humans are, well, human, and their strengths and weaknesses in writing are fairly easy to spot if you know what to look for. It’s still hard for AI to fully mimic those. Especially kids.
But the extent that AI gets close? Well, that makes machines seem rather like they’re using magic.
Which brings me to steampunk. And our latest StoryBundle. Here’s what curator Kristine Kathryn Rusch has to say about The Fantasy Steampunk Bundle:
The best steampunk gives us fantasy with an attitude and weird mechanical somethings or other. When we expect magic, we get machines. When we expect machines, we get magic. Sometimes we get both at the same time. We called this StoryBundle Fantasy Steampunk because most of the stories here are either steampunk, fantasy with steampunk elements, or fantasy that feels like steampunk.
The bundle includes three books exclusive to the bundle, all of them brand-new. The Victorians make a big appearance here, although we also have a story set in the Old West during the Victorian Era. A touch of H.G. Wells (the original steampunk writer) and some Orcs working in the Motor City, which, even though it’s set during Prohibition, feels steampunk to me.
Add in the seven other fantastic titles, and the ability get all of them for just $20 and contribute to charity all the while, and what could be better?
You can learn more about the bundle here.
Machines or magic. Or both. You decide.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
