What I've been up to

 So my last post was... almost last year. I'm apparently not good at blogging about fiction-related things. (But I do have a blog with trip reports from my various adventures now so if you really wanna know what I'm doing you're probably more likely to find info there!)

As for the fiction-writing side of things I've been very busy. I've submitted to various mags and publishers and burned myself out. I wrote... idk 500k words already this year? And I'm also feeling the burnout from that. (Not that that'll in any way stop me.)

I'm also getting ready to publish some more stories to my Amazon/KDP account. These will be four full novels of 60-100k words. I've been working on those for a long time now and feel like they're ready. I'm also exhausted waiting for publishers/agents/whatever to get responses to me so self-publish it is.

The four novels are:

Glass

This one is a treat. It's about a machine, an object owned by an inventor, a bit like if clockwork girls were real. Glass's father, the inventor Makriakoff has disappeared, but there's one way she might be able to find him. The Wishlord Trials are about to start, and if Glass wins, she'll get a rendez-vous with the Wishlord. As his name implies, he grants wishes, but only one to the winner of the Trials. Glass is determined to get in and battle her way to the end, even if the judges and other contestants don't think a delicate girl made of glass and metal can fight against human muscle, weapons, and cruelty.

The Angels of Phnom Penh

Binh Ca, whose name used to be different, is a tattoo artist's assistant and nothing more since the Java-Celebes Military Junta destroyed the Neo-Angkor People's Alliance, but when her old commander, a woman by the name of Kattina comes calling, her life once again changes. Kattina wants her to take up her old armour, to infiltrate a factory that used to produce the singlemost powerful weapon of her people: The Angels of Phnom Penh, and find something possibly even stronger. The Angels of Death. To do that, Binh Ca has to use her wits, her ally Hy Kim, and every memory of the war she can summon. Only if she can find the Angels, she might have a chance at kicking the JaCelebes out of her country and returning safety to the streets.

The Lifesmith's Daughter

 Kat (name might still change) never knew she had a different father until the General came to find her. He needs her, but his urgency has nothing to do with love. He needs her to confront her demonic mother, to trick a goddess into giving him her power, and only then, he will release the Lifesmith who has raised her. The goddess however offers a different deal: if Kat frees her, Kat will have her power, to do with as she pleases. The problem is that Kat doesn't have any magic- she'd never been taught how to use it. The only things she can call her own are the swords and shields, the animals, the tiny war-machine she whittles from wood like the Lifesmith showed her.

The Nightmare Conquest

Xia Shan thought she left the life of a Command tactician behind when the war against the Kines ended, but now, she's starting to dream about them again, and the things they did to her people when she was young. After the war, she sequestered herself on a tiny farming planet with a boy she saved from the destroyed planet Kalkattan, but when the boy starts to show signs of an alien illness and her old General calls, she has to choose: fight for Command once again and risk the peace she's gained, or flee the people who nearly destroyed her in their battle against the alien foe, and try to save Horus's life.

 

The books have been professionally edited and I've so far got covers for Glass. I'm working on the rest. (It's more difficult than I thought to get exactly the cover you want!) I'll update if there's any development or the date has set for these babies to go live!

Side note: I'm still trying to find a way to get stories to you for free. That's also more difficult than I thought. But let's see what happens!

See you then!

KDP Select and Planning Progress

Hey folks

Today's post will be a short notice.

The first (and most relevant) news is this:

A few of my books will be going up on KDP Select from today until the next three months!

The novels and short stories/story collections participating will be:

Elegy of the Stars
Warlike
Xenos
Worlds of Magic

Plus the stand-alone short stories:

Iana
The Hungry Worlds
Catching Fireflies

What does this mean for you? It means you can read my books for free if you have a KDP Select subscription (which you should!)! Check them out in my author profile here: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01H703DRC

Why did I decide to do it?

I love it when people read my stories and I love to share! KDP Select is a great opportunity to find more readers in any genre but especially science fiction. It also gives readers the chance to read something new and cool for free.

Do take this limited opportunity to familiarize yourself with my stories!

The second piece of news is that I'll be doing a short hiatus from posting every day. I'll be visiting family in Austria (my home country) and have decided not to take my PC with me. As much as I love everyone on here I do need a break from the internet.

Instead I'll be taking my Kindle and spending all my time reading the last few John Wyndham books I haven't gotten to yet! I'm currently about 70% into The Secret People.

Another important (and cool!) piece of information: I finished another short story today. This one is called Heart of Askelion. It's a love story at heart (strangely enough considering those are not usually my jam). Then again... I recently finished another (called A Thousand Frontiers) which is also a love story...

Anyway. All that has to happen is for them to be edited. Heart of Askelion is currently 15k words long and will be complete at about 20-25k. It lacks some details as of yet and will probably need a few more scenes.

A Thousand Frontiers is complete at 3.5k words. This one will likely not get over more than 5k.

Once they have been edited I'll upload a few glimpses and scenes of it for you to sample! I really think they are great.

All right. I'll chat again next week Tuesday! Until then, have a great time!

WriteBot.

Xenos and Worlds of Magic ONLINE!

Hey guys!

The two short stories collections I've been talking about recently have been published today! They are Xenos and Worlds of Magic.

Xenos is a science fiction work including such sub-genres as cosmic horror, first contact, weird events, and post-apocalyptic fiction. Some of them (as implied by cosmic 'horror') are actually very creepy. These are namely Of One Mind, which deals with the effects of tampering with humans minds, set between half a century and a century in the future of our own world, and Moonfarer, which is pure cosmic horror (and scared me the most while writing it).

Another story in the anthology is Immortal (A creature of a different world seeks a new body to inhabit on Earth). This one is one of my favourites because of its concept and because the alien main character is not the kind to just obtain a body by any means necessary. He goes about it much like a job interview instead.

Xenos also includes an older (but very popular) story called 2115. 2115's blurb: As alien spaceships descend on Earth, a worn-out soldier, a drug-addicted medic, and a little girl have to fight for their survival.

The Epilogue to Xenos is Eye in the Sky. I think it fits the cosmic horror theme quite well.

Worlds of Magic on the other hand is entirely different. It's half stories you'd read to children before bedtime - Lucy and the Magician, Catching Fireflies, Seafarer - and half fantasy for a more mature audience (but nothing graphic!) - The Hungry Worlds, Into the Still Places, The Path of Lost Souls -. These are gentle and adventurous stories. They excite through the adventure imagery they build and make you feel good because of the themes explored. The themes are friendship, love, and working together despite the odds. This by the way goes for both halves of the anthology!

The first story in Worlds of Magic is Seafarer. This is a pirate story with strange magics and a slightly wry way of telling it. The premise of this story went: How did the princess fall in love with the pirate? I had in mind the pirate would be a guy. But she wasn't. I had a lot of fun writing the pirate queen Aaea and the more modest (although not really) princess Isolde's father the King. They make a great comical pairing between the two of them.

Lucy and the Magician is another story (the second story in the anthology) very close to my heart. It took me a while to finish and it's fairly long but very complete in a way. While editing this story, the ending came around (I changed the first draft's ending) and it just fit. It's a story about gifts - and primarily the gift of friendship.

The other stories are Catching Fireflies (You've heard a lot about this one! It's the story that got me my first review back in September!) about a kelpie trying to seduce a girl to join him in the depths of his lake - with a twist. The girl - his prey - has a task to complete under the waves that only a human can do. And it's dangerous.

In the other half of the anthology you'll find the stories more geared towards adults (themes as well as rating of scenes. These stories are a tiny bit more bloody and serious in a mature way than the three above). The Hungry Worlds is a thief's guilty journey into a deep forest to save the village she stole from last. Into the Still Places portrays a war between two races of different worlds in which neither of them wants to give way yet both have to if they are to save their realms. The sixth story, The Path of Lost Souls, is probably the most adult-serious of the whole book. It's more grave than all the others combined (although still not graphic).

Want to give it a try? It's out on Amazon! (PS: don't mind the missing covers. I have faith in KDP that they'll update them eventually!)

Xenos: (creepy science fiction!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6KHNB9

Worlds of Magic: (magic adventure stories!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6KQM28

Have a good night/day! WriteBot.

Elegy of the Stars and Warlike PUBLISHED!

Hi again everyone!

'Who is the Monster?' is coming along nicely. In the meantime there's an announcement I have to make!

As I explained in my post yesterday I've uploaded two more stories on KDP. These are two novels: Elegy of the Stars and Warlike.

I'm pleased to inform you they are now ONLINE! They are finally finished and available for purchase!

You can find them with the links above (just click on the titles of the books!) or in my Author Profile: https://www.amazon.com/Jasmin-Gelinck/e/B01H703DRC

If you do read them and like them leave a review! As you can probably tell by now: Reviews are the best! WriteBot greatly appreciates reviews!

D'you want to see the covers? They're really gorgeous!

ELEGY OF THE STARS

On the planet of Glast Oria's only missive is to survive, against the cold, the hunger, the Priests of the Seirios, the Administration of the planet, but when Quinn, another urchin, saves her life from the Administration and lets her stay in his hideout, her allegiance to only herself begins to change.
Over time, a reluctant trust between them forms, and Quinn proposes a heist to steal food from the local cult.
Their plan turns to action in early winter, and at first seems like a success, but once inside the Chantry, the Seirios Cult's headquarters, everything goes terribly wrong, and both of them might not survive to see the planet's spring.

WARLIKE

In the far future on Earth, the names of most cities have been forgotten, and wastelands have taken their places. Thresha's lived in the jungle-forest all her seventeen cycles. A young woman too stubborn to admit defeat when the tribe's strongest war party is slaughtered by the raptors, ancient reptilian giants that were supposed to have been extinct thousands of years ago. Thresha is convinced she can kill the beasts and free her tribe once and for all, but she needs to throw her spears wider than elder Kava allows. Thresha soon finds herself trapped in an ancient maze, in a world before a time anyone of her tribe can remember, faced with monsters she couldn't have imagined and, when she is discovered, exile. But for Thresha, the only way out is forward, and to the east, the Sands and the weapons they hold beckon. The Sands, the end of the world, which no one has ever returned from, and no one believes there is an end to.
It's only when she meets Zon, an almost-outlaw, and his shooting tubes, that her hopes of destroying the raptors earns a chance to succeed. But Zon has problems of his own, a horde of metal men so different from anything Tresha has ever known, and those will have to be dealt with before the raptors can be destroyed once and for all. 

WriteBot has worked on these books the last three years. They are great! Do leave if a review if you want to make WriteBot happy!

Have a good day!