Tag Archives: cyberpunk

The Data Disruption launch

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The new Genrenauts story is here!

Cyberpunk is one of my very favorite genres. Movies like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner were formative for me growing up, as well as The Matrix. I played the hell out of Netrunner card game growing up, as well as Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020. In school, I got to take a SF/F class from a professor whose specialty is cyberpunk.

I was a bit young to read Cyberpunk when it was first emerging in film and fiction. But as a Millennial/Gen Y/Oregon Trail generation kid, I grew up in an ever-more Cyberpunk world, with global communications technology, global mega-corps, consolidation, ever-more-impressive medical and technological breakthroughs, automation, rising corporate influence on government, and so on. It’d be pretty easy for me to argue that Cyberpunk is the genre most reflective of the world I’ve known growing up. It’s given me many of the tools I use to see and analyze the world, in terms of the social impact of technology, how labor, corporations, and politics intersect, and humanist questions about androids, robots, and so on.

Also, it’s got cool fight scenes.

So it’s little surprise that the majority of my non-novella short fiction is cyberpunk. “Kachikachi Yama” and “Can You Tell Me How To Get to Paprika Place” are both cyberpunk stories, though their focuses are very distinct. Cyberpunk aesthetics show up in the Ree Reyes series as well, especially in Hexomancy.

Acknowledgments 

I want to thank John Appel, Devan Barlow, Beth Cato, and A.F. Grappin for their great beta reader feedback on this story. Richard Shealy’s copy edit helped me say what I want to say with clarity. Thanks also to Sean Glenn for keeping the visual style of Genrenauts going with his cover design, and to Meg White Underwood for being my first reader and final proofer, as well as a marvelous brainstorming buddy. And once again, thanks to everyone who backed, promoted, and otherwise supported the Genrenauts Season One Kickstarter.

So without further ado, here’s The Data Disruption! It’s free on all ebook platforms. Check below for more information about the story.

Amazon * Barnes & Noble * iTunes
Gumroad * Kobo

The Data Disruption cover. Design by Sean Glenn

Design by Sean Glenn

 

When Stories Break, You Send in the Genrenauts!

The Genrenauts are a group of story experts who travel to parallel worlds. Each is the home of a narrative genre—Science Fiction or Romance, Fantasy or Western—populated by archetypal characters and constantly playing out familiar stories.

The Genrenauts’ mission: find and fix broken stories. If they fail, the ripples from the story worlds will cause havoc and devastation on their home world.

In the world of Cyberpunk, D-Source, a noted hacker, has disappeared, leaving his team’s storyline to grind to a halt. Angstrom King leads the Genrenauts on a mission to find out what happened to D-Source and how to get the cyberpunks back in the action.

World-spanning megacorporations…suspicious mercenaries living on the edge…lethal computer programs designed to tear your mind to shreds…the Genrenauts will face all these and more to get the story back on track—before it’s too late.

A short story in the world of Genrenauts (a finalist for the r/Fantasy “Stabby” Award for Best Serialized Fiction.)

Those links again:
Amazon * Barnes & Noble * iTunes
Gumroad * Kobo

Write-a-Thon Report: Week Two

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My first Write-a-Thon story is done, with a bit over a day to spare. “Can You Tell Me How to Get…” ended up clocking in at 5,600 words, more than expected or intended.

I’m still not very good at writing shorter stories. I will see about getting either tale #2 or #3 to be under 4K (many venues like stories under four thousand words, including some notable semi-pro and a few pro markets).

It will need a lot of revision, but it’s done. This is actually the first short story I’ve finished since Clarion West, since I’ve been focusing on novels. Two more to go!

Write-a-Thon Week One

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As I previously mentioned, I’m participating in the Clarion West Write-a-Thon, which runs concurrently with the 2011 workshop in Seattle.

My first story for the Write-a-Thon is “Can You Tell Me How To Get…”, a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk muppet story.  Yeah, that’s right: muppets.

We’ve hit our participant goal, now we’re looking for sponsors to support one or more writers while we toil away for the next six weeks, sculpting awesome out of pure nothing, fueled by caffeine, madness, and whatever other sins the various writers use for inspiration.

Here’s a short teaser from the story-in-progress:

“Can you tell me how to get to Paprika Place?” Charlie would ask.  The ones that remembered him from their TV days would shake their heads politely.  They’d been viewers once, tuning in every afternoon to learn their letters and numbers.  The younger ones, or the ones whose parents had worked for The Mouse or CapeCo, who’d been forbidden to watch Bunco’s shows, they would just recoil from Fluffasaurus and run back to their houses.  Then the guards would come in their sharp black suits and sunglasses and ask him to move along.

Remember kids, don’t talk to strangers!