Tuesday, January 20, 2015

A Special Gift for Educators

Due to popular request, I've made my short story, "The Turing Test" available to educators for free. Additionally, this version of the story includes a discussion guide and activity suggestions for students.

If you are an educator who intends to use the story for educational purposes, you may download the short story and educational materials (all in one file) here.

Thank you, teachers, librarians, and other educators who bring my stories to your students! 

Monday, January 12, 2015

THE FUTURE COLLECTION + 3 Ways to Win!

The Future Collection is officially out tomorrow! For less than a cup of coffee, you can read six sci fi short stories that involve time travel and revenge, cyrogenics and star-crossed love, teleportation and a serious cover-up, and much more!


Still on the fence? You can nab one of the short stories for just $0.99 (or free with Kindle Unlimited) here. There are also three different ways you can win a copy:

--> Tell the League Writers what your favorite sci fi trope is, and you can with a copy of The Future Collection, The Body Electric (signed!), and an Across the Universe water bottle here

--> Tag a friend who love sci fi in my Facebook page, and you could win a free copy of The Future Collection here!

-->Visit the official blog tour for The Body Electric going on all this week, and you'll win a complete signed trilogy of Across the Universe and a signed copy of The Body Electric, and an Across the Universe water bottle, and if, when you win, you mention you'd like a copy of The Future Collection, I'll throw one in as well :) You can see the full list of blogs here!


Thursday, January 8, 2015

Announcing: A New Short Story Collection

Newsletter subscribers already know this, but I'm happy to announce that next week, a new collection of short stories by me will be released upon the world!

The Future Collection includes six unique stories, all of which take place in the future. They range from time travel to teleportation, and each features different characters who must face different problems.

The collection will be available on Tuesday, and will start off with a price of just $2.99--a price that may go up by spring. There are six stories in the collection. That's less than 50 cents per short story!

ABOUT THE STORIES:

DOCTOR-PATIENT CONFIDENTIALITY: A young woman wakes up in a cryomed ward of a hospital. As she recalls what led to her confinement, she starts to realize just what the consequences of her actions were, and how much time has passed since she was injured. 


THE MOST PRECIOUS MEMORY: In a world where memories can be bought and sold as highly addictive drugs, one transaction takes an unusual turn. *Note*: this story was previously published in the Soothe The Savage Beast anthology. 

THE GIRL AND THE MACHINE: A man has limited abilities to travel through time, but a cute girl pops up in his life, informing him that her time machine can open the door to far greater powers. But there's something ominous about it... *Note*: This story is available as an individual short in Amazon. 

LAG: A reporter had been chasing down a lead...but after a malfunction in the teleporter she used, she's forgotten what the lead was. Now she's searching for clues in her own life to discover what it was she's missing. 

THE TURING TEST: A college student participates in a turing test to see if she can distinguish which of the two subjects is human and which is an android. *Note:* A version of this story is a part of the Special Edition of THE BODY ELECTRIC novel and was previously published in Lightspeed Magazine. 

AS THEY SLIP AWAY: A group of artists on a generation space ship that reviles art is given a unique assignment, one that draws one young lady far too close to a possessive man protected by the ship's government. *Note:* This short story is available free online and is linked to the ACROSS THE UNIVERSE world. 

Also included in this collection are end notes, describing the inspiration behind each short story and hidden clues and allusions to sci fi classics. 

The collection concludes with two sample chapters from my latest book, THE BODY ELECTRIC.

If you're hesitant to read the whole collection, you can try out one of the original tales, "The Girl & the Machine," on Amazon: free for Kindle Unlimited users, and 99 cents for everyone else. Currently, the ebook is available exclusively through Amazon--this is so that I can offer this special deal through Kindle Unlimited, a service similar to Spotify that allows people to "borrow" ebooks for free (while the author is still given payment through the program). I'm just trying this out for now--after 90 days, the book will be available across all other platforms, and the deal will go away--so grab it now if you want it!

Monday, January 5, 2015

Make Writing More Than Just Another New Years’ Resolution, Guest Post by Kellie Sheridan

As we start a new year, a lot of us have a renewed sense of purpose for our writing goals. This is the year we’re going to do ALL THE THINGS! We come armed with outlines, and game plans and reward systems (and probably a fair bit of caffeine). It’s a new year and this is when we make things happen!



Stickers on daily writing calendars, word count graphs, achievement badges, rewards for reaching word count milestones… we writers can go a little overboard when it comes to rewarding ourselves for getting words on the page. Which makes sense. It can be undeniably hard to keep sitting down day after day to write and edit and edit again while still never really feeling like you’re getting anywhere. Yes, there are some euphorically amazing moments in writing—finishing that first draft, receiving notes back from a beta reader, signing with an agent, seeing your book in print—but those can come months or even years apart. How do you keep yourself going in the meantime? I know this is something I struggle with almost constantly and have more than a few writing friends who have said the same.

There are two times of year for me when I feel the most motivated to write, New Years and NaNoWriMo. For me it’s the collective sense of enthusiasm that gets me sitting down at my desk every day to write more than I probably would have otherwise. It’s continuing that process between January and November that seems to be the trick… which is exactly why Write All Year got started. Write All Year is an online community of writers that is attempting to combine the accountability and community of NaNoWriMo with the enthusiasm of starting off a new year, while also keeping that feeling going all year long.

Writing doesn’t stop on November 30th, fifty-thousand words isn’t always a realistic goal, sometimes we all need to focus on polish and quality more than just getting words on the page. And sometimes writing is excruciatingly hard to do. These are all things that Write All Year attempts to account for, while also housing an amazing group of writers who are ready to cheer each other on and push one another to meet their goals.

If you love to write, spend way too much time thinking about writing without actually doing it, or are aiming to accomplish big bookish things in 2015, Write All Year could be a great fit for you. We have forums in place to talk books and writing, a pretty epic spreadsheet to track your word count, unlockable achievements for when you hit those big milestones, and accountability groups to find people to help keep you on track for your personal goals. Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And we’re just getting started. Whether or not you have specific writing goals in mind for 2015, if you want to make writing a priority, we’d absolutely love to have you join our ranks. Just head on over to Write All Year, and don’t forget to say hello in the forums.

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Write All Year is an online writing community created by Kellie Sheridan and Patchwork Press. You can find us at http://www.writeallyear.patchwork-press.com

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Announcing: THE WINNERS!!!

First: Thank you all, again, for supporting The Body Electric and for supporting charity--with your help, we bought two beehives plus an additional packet of supplies for three different struggling families in developing nations, we supported local economies, we supported local wildlife and fauna, and we supported bees, which are facing threats to their existence. That's a lot of good!

And now for the winners! It took me so long long to post this because there were so many of you entering--more than a thousand, and each with different entries! Remember: the winners were selected randomly. I vetted them all, and am happy to announce the winners now!

WINNER OF 29 SIGNED BOOKS + SWAG


This image was the winning entry from tumblr user trenchcoatedslytherin, who used YA books to spell out the title of The Body Electric! You're going to have a lot more books to use to spell out titles now :) 

WINNER OF ARC PRIZE PACK

The winner of the ARC prize pack is Tamara S., a librarian in Arkansas!

WINNER OF INTERNATIONAL PRIZE PACK


The winner of the international prize pack is Amanda T, who did this amazing pumpkin carving!

Again, thank you EVERYONE for playing along, sharing the book, helping to raise funds for charity, and spreading the word. I really appreciate it! I'm getting swag packs ready for the teachers and librarians who requested them, and I'm really just so thankful to you all! Those of you who are book reviewers may be getting info from me sooner rather than later about a new collection of short stories that I have coming out soon :)

Friday, January 2, 2015

You Made This Happen...Thank You for Supporting Charity

I'm working on the last details of the giveaway--more than 1000 people entered to win (wow!) and each entrant had multiple entries. I hope to announce the winner either late today or early tomorrow, but meanwhile, an easy thing for me to add up was the number of sales in December.

In the end, 394 of you contributed to buying bee hives for struggling families in developing nations by purchasing a copy of The Body Electric. I rounded up to 400, and we were able to buy two beehives plus an extra $100 of equipment for families to get started on building a future for themselves and supporting their families.

Whether you purchased a copy, wrote a review, did fan art, or just spread the word, you helped make this happen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.