Comments (0)

By madpoet, December 15, 2011 3:48 pm

New story time!

This one’s been kicking around for some time. Last year, Scott Roche and I co-wrote a novellette we called “The Battle of Wildspitze“. I’ve been trying to decide how to explain that world to people, and I think I have a concise way of summing it up.

• Harry Potter.
• But everyone knows about magic.
• And it’s 1910.

And that’s basically it in a nutshell. One of us had come up with an idea for a short story regarding dragon-riding pirates raiding airships, and we started writing. I had originally thought that this would be a parallel world, no really recognizable people in it, until Scott introduced Baron Richtoffen as one of the pirates. That single character nailed the setting, the attitude, and the timeline for me.

Comments (1)

By madpoet, December 5, 2011 9:44 am

This morning, I started counting up the universes that I’ve got planned out and am currently writing in, or that I have stories that I plan on coming back to – recurring universes, as it were. So far, here they are:

1. The Sinner – my two weird west stories- High Moon and The Devil’s Due.
2. Sparks and Spells (that’s a tentative name) – the alt history fantasy/manapunk pre-WWI universe – Battle of Wildspitze and Finding the Fire. (This is the universe that Scott Roche and I are sharing / writing in.) New stories coming from both of us soon.

Comments (2)

By madpoet, October 6, 2011 10:19 pm

I realized something interesting. The story that precedes the current “live” story, The Devil’s Due, does not appear in text on the site. It’s appeared elsewhere, but not here in text – just audio. So, because this will go up on Amazon when Devil’s Due will, and because I’m a completist, here’s the text of my Great Hites story – “High Moon”.

High Moon  is now available from Amazon and BN.com. Meanwhile, enjoy the current story.

The cover image is by Michael Martelli. It’s used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License, the text of which is available here. And the original picture is available here.

Comments (0)

By madpoet, September 27, 2011 11:10 pm

Cover Art by Madeleine Fisher

Athena and The Mechanic is now available at Amazon – Click Here, and at BN.com – Click Here

Comments (0)

By madpoet, September 16, 2011 12:57 pm

Still working on the next story, which is now clocking in at about 7800 words. It’ll easily be over 10,000, but it’s mostly written. I’m just adjusting, rewriting, editing, and polishing now. My anticipation is that if you want to read Cost of Duty without paying for it, you’ve probably got about 24 hours to do that. Because sometime tomorrow, I’ll be posting a story in the Wildspitze universe that Scott Roche and I created. A story of magic, machines, and mayhem in Meiji Japan. A story that combines traditional Japanese mythology, history, family, swordplay, romance, and Nikolai Tesla.

Comments (0)

By madpoet, September 16, 2011 7:49 am

As my contribution to “Speak Out with your Geek Out“, there are a lot of things I could talk about.
I could talk about books – e- and otherwise. I could talk about gaming (PC, Gamecube, Wii, DSi, 3DS… Pokemon…). Or movies. (Star Wars…) Or anime… (working my way through Xam’d now – thank goodness for Netflix). Or writing.
But the point of Speak Out with your Geek Out is to talk about that secret geekiness that you aren’t comfortable sharing out in the wide world. Which for me, means talking about me being a geek about my church.
I know, I’ve talked about being LDS on the blog before, (see my post on Being Unpopular, for example), but I don’t know that I’ve talked about my geeky love for my church. Every morning, I make it a point to get out my scriptures and spend some time reading and thinking. And most of the time, I’m reading and studying in the Book of Mormon. If I’m driving somewhere in the car, chances are 50/50 that I’m thinking about something related to my church. Why?

Comments (1)

By madpoet, September 12, 2011 5:06 pm

The Cost of Duty

A Fantasy Short Story

by Zach Ricks

#

The first story is down. But if you missed it, The Cost of Duty is available from Amazon. Also from Barnes and Noble if you prefer epub. And it’s only $0.99.

The photo is used under a creative commons license, and the original version is on flickr at this link.

Comments (4)

By madpoet, June 14, 2011 1:16 am

Part of this Trust30 exercise is to clarify my own thinking, and in so doing, I’ll be using analogies and language that make the most sense to me – and a big part of that is my religious practice. This isn’t meant as an attempt to convince people to my way of thinking. Rather, it’s an attempt to explain my thinking to myself. Anyone reading this is, of course, welcome to draw their own analogies, use their own metaphors, and do their own writing, thank you very much. Let me also state at the outset that I’m someone that believes that things can be objectively true. That they are true not based on our point of view, thank you very much, Obi-Wan (and even then, note that Obi-Wan said many, not all – and in that, the Emperor mirrors that language in RotJ when he says that Luke is mistaken about a great many things), but that they are true despite our point of view. And once I accept that as a starting premise, the next question has to be: Oh Say, What is Truth? And this writing helps me think about that, and maybe come closer to it. At least, that’s the goal.

Here’s today’s Emerson.

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s a lot to pack here. I’ve talked about trusting yourself, and making decisions, and doing work. This quote brings a couple of things to mind. Pokémon, an iron rod, and a tree. Why? Beats me. Let me ramble on for a bit, and we’ll see what tumbles out.