Breaking News: Amazon Reviews for "The Stolen: Two Short Stories"

Hello hello!

Well, You lovely, lovely people have gotten me to the 150 mark on my fan page, and as it happens, I finished my present for you just earlier this afternoon! I'll try to have it up by about Thursday. If you didn't catch my tweets, well, stick around--it'll be a pleasant surprise, that's all I'm saying. I've had my serious face on to tackle a few important issues, but the short story is going to be rather less solemn.

Okay, fine, you get two hints about the story: GLADoS and Jonathan Coulter. That's all! No moar! Now you must wait.

I also want to share a rather awesome review from my Amazon page for The Stolen: Two Short Stories.

This one is by rising horror star J.C. Eggleton, author of Brookhaven.

The Review:

"I must say, I rather enjoyed the short stories in this book. Ms. Browne does a great job of crafting a dystopian future of censorship and sexual repression. She hurdles the most common pitfall of the genre by avoiding staking too much on concocting futuristic technologies. There are a few gizmos, certainly, but they take a backseat to the oft-overlooked, all-important detail: People. The first story takes a gritty look at the growing sub-culture in the modern world, prisoners, and never deviates from the point.

The second was perhaps more interesting because it hits Ms. Browne so close to home and that's censorship. It's obvious from the text that Shakespeare is a passion and I was impressed by the genuine pain her characters go through while having to chop and delete and muddy the wording of our language's finest craftsman. The story focuses less on futurism and does a wonderful job of fleshing out the characters. A great deal of it focuses on their day to day lives, makes the horrors of their actions seem almost the norm, and I enjoyed that.

As much as I wanted to rate this a perfect five, I had to be honest. If there was any way I could rate the book four and a half stars, I would. I'm simply not a big fan of short stories in general, they always leave you wanting more. That's exactly what this book did: I left me looking forward to more of this rising star's work and I would recommend any fan of the genre to do the same."

There you have it, folks. If you've somehow skipped this story until now, wait no longer. Go forth to Amazon! Here is the Amazon link, on top, and the Smashwords link, below it.

The Stolen: Two Short Stories on Amazon

The Stolen: Two Short Stories on Smashwords

*****

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. You'll be getting a treat on Thursday, so tune in for the short story! In the meantime, you can keep an eye on me on Twitter and on Tumblr. Don't forget to check back for short stories, more politics, analysis, scraps of science, and even some reviews. This is your SciFiMagpie, over and out!

First World Princess Problems: Disney, Entitlement, and the Hipster Movement

Hello hello!

I am back once again with the blog post I promised earlier this week. With a fairly sizeable American Apparel store on the way to work, hipsters are pretty visible as a part of my daily life. The movement wasn't one that I understood at first. I saw the fashion, heard some of the music--unless it was too obscure, of course--and set my brain to work, trying to comprehend it.

Source. This is pretty much half of your basic hipster wardrobe; however, fedoras, oddly-fitting 70s blouses, ludicrously high-cut pants, and chunky plastic jewelry are also mainstays. Oh, and those goddamn mustaches. Mustaches everywhere.

Part 1: Observing Hipsters

I could tell there was a trend going on, and I recognized the impact of Japanese fashion on its style, but there, my understanding ended. Thick-rimmed glasses and a mishmash of stylistic references to different eras that were combined into a decidedly unique look, generally involving Apple products. Hipster fashion was everywhere, growing each day, and yet, to be called a hipster was an insult. The look is praised and derided in the same breath. It has managed to retain an exclusive cachet even as overweight North Americans everywhere are trying to squeeze into sterility- and embolism-inducing skinny jeans.

Just in case you, dear reader, are confused by the term hipster, I'll provide a brief description of the word's application in most modern contexts. The current hipster look and attitude are stereotypically characterized by exclusivity, streamlined clothing cut for those with a lower-than-average BMI, expensive electronics, obscure music by mostly independent artists, and the traditional snarkiness every cool group displays at its zenith. Skinny jeans and an androgynous look are generally the norm, and a pseudo-worldly display of international interests combined with affected quirkiness are hallmarks of the attitude that matches the clothing.

Of course, this description is leaving out the history of the hipster, which is an evolving movement that takes its roots from Jack Kerouac and other Beat poets, as well as from Andy Warhol's Factory crew. Still, don't let the description fool you--most hipsters are, as with any trend, far less extreme than in typical descriptions, and quite a few people can make the fashions work without having to display the less tasteful aspects of the attitude.

I'm going to touch on a previous column, which dealt with cultural appropriation and skimmed over how to avoid it. I mention it because affecting 'tribal' styles without a specific ethnic origin and using 'first Nations inspired' designs, such as feather headdresses, are common to hipster styles. A lot of important touchstones for non-Euro-American cultures that happen to look cool get borrowed and recycled in the hipster look. I don't think I need to explain why using sacred or culturally sacred symbols for casual fashion is bad and pretty disrespectful.

Still, because I don't want to rehash what most of the internet has been bitching about for the last couple of years, I'm going to skip ahead to the part that involves Disney. We all love Disney, right?

Source. There's your overlap. You've been warned.

Part 2: Disney Princesses

A few friends of mine have started to rear their own offspring, and the rest--including me--still use this and any other excuse to enjoy some Disney nostalgia. There's no getting around it--ostensibly evil, money-grubbing, exploitative corporation or no, Disney is a company that makes a good kid's movie. I'm not going to get full-bore feminist on everyone's asses, and we'll talk more about why Disney is both very good and very bad another time, but the fact remains that good songs and good animation resulted in some good movies.

The princess movies in particular have done a surprisingly good job of surviving their over-marketing. In spite of being saturated with merchandise and sequels related to the roughly grouped stories based on carefully retold fairy tales, we aren't sick of them yet. The beauty of The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, or even the somewhat condescending Princess and the Frog film still remain, even with the faults of the films.

I hate to gut something that formed such an essential part of so many childhoods, and I hate to restate the obvious or oft-said even more, but the princess films have also done a fair bit of damage to our psyches. In addition to the body issues, the presentation of love as the end-all and be-all of life, and the easy solutions, the princesses generally had to put in only token effort to have the world delivered to their feet. Perhaps it is natural, then, that movies associated with white privilege and the style associated with white privilege have overlapped so neatly.

The thing is, the princesses always sought 'more', a certain meaningfulness to their lives that they just couldn't put in place. Belle was unfashionably intelligent; Ariel, curious about a culture she was restricted from interacting with; and Jasmine, unwilling to hide from the world once she'd gotten a taste of life beyond her castle walls. The older princess films were made in a time when marriage was the only thing that mattered, and the newer films have been made with Disney trying to compensate for its past failures, so they lack the soul-searching elements that made the 90s era Disney Renaissance films so good.

Source. More dress-up time, to give your brain a quick rest and some fashion candy.

Part 3: The Point

You were probably wondering how these two were linked, and whether the entire post was an excuse to show these drawings. (It wasn't, I promise.) The hipster movement's roots had to do with disaffectation with privilege, and its current manifestation is both reliant on Western wealth and Western discomfort with this wealth. Yes, we're currently experiencing a job crisis in America, but up here in Canada and down in the States, most people still have enough money for that iPhone, and will still make sure that their second-hand clothing is fashionably tight.

For young women at the moment, then, whether we're comfortably swaddled in the illusion of security that university provides or out and learning the joys of long-term work in retail, these films still resound. Those of us who were born into the 90s or 80s, we 'millenials', were promised the world. And, having gotten it, or having had it snatched away by , we want 'more', a thing we can't put a name to but keep searching for. Like the girls wandering around their family's gardens and singing about their discontent, many of us feel incomplete.

The hipster movement soothes these feelings nicely, with its concentration on aesthetics and arbitrary acceptance and rejection system. The stories that resounded with us as children still resound now, well after their appeal should have expired, for the simple reason that we are trying to find meaning, and failing.

At times like this, it's hard not to scowl and point to people like Malala Yousafzai, one of millions of girls who would kill for the educational opportunities that we grudgingly endure and even squander here. What the hell are we complaining about, one might ask, and not without reason. Privilege, though, and the easy access to money, social supports, and parental back-up plans, are their own traps. The disintegration of these backup plans as the economy has failed hasn't really fixed the problem of growing up in a world where life is easy and hard questions are optional.

Am I saying that the answer to our desire for 'more' is activism rather than indifference? Well, possibly. It certainly beats settling into that sufficient job and sufficient house and wondering why being able to afford most of one's wants just isn't satisfactory. The thing that gives someone's life a meaning may be something big, like getting equal educational opportunities for women, or it might be something smaller, like making art. Still, if there's one thing we can learn from the princesses and the hipsters, it's that ambient levels of wealth won't keep us happy, or keep us from looking for something more significant. Romantic love alone certainly isn't the answer, but there are answers out there. Looking, and looking beyond the next iProduct upgrade or temporary entertainment, is the only way to find that vague yet recognizeable quantity, "More". "More"--it's the new American dream.

*****

Thanks for returning and patiently waiting for your late Sunday night fix. You can get "more" --and by that I mean MOAR, of course--Twitter and on Tumblr. Don't forget to check back for short stories, more politics, analysis, scraps of science, and even some reviews. This is your SciFiMagpie, over and out!

Just a Sip: A Preview of New Work

Hello hello!

Well, my darling fans and followers, you have shown your love and gotten me over the 100 mark on my fan page. That's here, of course: https://www.facebook.com/SciFiMagpie

Right! So, without further ado, here is a preview of "A Shot of Vodka", a non-science fiction work I'll be putting out this winter. Christmas is the projected date. It's novella length, but I may be including another short story or two along with it.

Source. Of course, thanks to wiki, you can have ALL the vodka. However, this story is about something much more disturbing than whatever happened on your last liquor story adventure. I can pretty much guarantee that.

Of course, no work is complete without a sinister origin...
It was inspired by my first-ever, feverish reading of Doestoyevski's Crime and Punishment some years ago. The story got under my skin in a way that's difficult to describe. I think anyone else who's been really gripped by a story will understand. At the same time, I had a rather maniacal and slightly insane English teacher, who encouraged us to 'tear the book apart' and applied a culturally incorrect reading of the siblings' relationship to our analyses. One thing led to another, and I pursued study of the text on my own. It was the beginning of my love affair with Russian literature, which has continued to this day, but it also sowed the seeds of this novella. 
While there is an overlap in the character's names, they aren't intended to be fan fiction versions of the title characters of the masterpiece. Rather, they're children growing up in the shadows of famous namesakes, connected by coincidence to literary tragedies, but otherwise remote. And, as you'll learn in December, their tragedy follows a far different course. 

I will forewarn readers that while there is little disturbing content in my excerpt, the story contains sensitive material. This may not be an easy read, and may not be for everyone. There may or may not be heads split open by axes, but I've heard from critics that this is one of my darkest stories yet.

Enough teasing--let's get to that excerpt. Here, Avya introduces herself and her brother, and we get a small taste of some of the undercurrents disturbing her family's ordinary exterior.

*****

Rod and I were close. I did love my brother, and rather a lot; it’s a difficult thing to explain, and I suppose that’s why I’m writing this. Though I looked on him only as a sister does, I did sometimes wish we weren’t related—to look at us, one-to-one, you wouldn’t have thought we were siblings. We looked nothing alike. Still, if he was not, you know, my brother, well…you know how it is.

People had remarked from the time he was very little, that he was handsome, and startlingly so. His name suited him. I suppose it’s all genetic coincidence, his resemblance to the other Raskolnikov; nonetheless, there was that fine build and dark hair and inky, oil-black eyes, but he was only of medium height, not exceptionally tall, like his namesake.

             I wished I looked more like him. I am the light-haired one in the family. Big brown eyes, slightly darker eyelashes and eyebrows, full-boned and sturdy, but not plump. Reasonably good-looking, I suppose, but in the ordinary way. To look at our parents it would be hard to see any trace of my looks in their faces. In the snow, though, we all hunch the same way.

It was, as it happened, very cold at the time of which I speak. Our parents were out, that weekend, visiting relatives in another town. We had decided not to go, and they left Rod and me to our own devices. The previous night had been a quiet one, as our evenings usually are; despite my brother’s looks, he had no close female acquaintances that I currently knew of, even though there were plenty of girls who would have been more than happy to get in the sack with him.

So, Saturday morning did not begin with my return at one in the morning, already hung-over and crawling on my knees. Let it go on the record that, as I walked into the day, my soul was mostly unblemished and I was sober.

I was in a good mood, too. However, when breakfast was sitting on the table before us, glancing out the window was enough to displace my equilibrium. That certain kind of snow was falling, steadily, heavily. I groaned about it to Rod, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“Avya, Winnipeg. Winnipeg, Avya. Have you met before?”

“Da, darlink, but ees cold.”

He groaned. “It is much too early in the morning for that accent.” It was eight o’clock. No-one in the family slept in.

We crunched away at our cereal for a few moments. “Still have to do chores,” I said.

“Ugh. It’s time to handle some of the recycling, and it’s snowing like a bitch.”

“Wanna make a deal?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll handle the recycling if you do the dishes and the laundry.”

            Crunch, crunch, went his cornflakes. “Fine, what’s the catch?”

            “None. I’m going out with the girls to a movie. You’ll probably get the house to yourself today.”

            “Not another horror movie?”

            I shrugged. “Wasn’t my first choice, but Parmi liked it and Nicole wanted to see it too. I’ll probably be out all day.”

            “Suit yourself.”

            I put the bowl on the counter, next to the sink, and walked upstairs to change. Outside, the snow continued, stolidly, with a certain Communist courage. Snow brings equality, I thought. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a Ford POS or a Benz, if it’s stuck in your driveway, you still need to borrow a shovel and possibly somebody’s arms to heft it.

            It was one of those mornings where a trite insight like this is followed by a string of meandering, stupid thoughts about shovels and which sweater to wear. Pulling off the plain blue pyjamas, I stared at the closet for a few minutes, glanced down at myself.

            The door opened.

            “Rod, go away. I’m in my underwear.”

            “Sorry. Whoops.” His footsteps paused for a moment and then, resolutely, padded back towards the kitchen.

            I had goose-bumps, at this point, and I was annoyed with him for barging in on me. I pulled out a grey sweater and thick cords, pulled on a pair of wool socks.

            My parka was in the nook by the door. I pulled it on and stuffed my feet into boots, hands into gloves. “See you!”

            “Bye.”

            I opened the door to the garage, loaded up the car, and drove out into the cold. 

            Notes about the year 1985: the Berlin Wall was still up. Gorbachev and Reagan were in power. New Coke emerged and died within a three-month time span. Nelson Mandela was still in prison. My heart broke. The IRA was still bombing the shit out of the police department. Route 66 died. They found Titantic. Windows 1.0 was released. Things were bombed and a number of natural disasters occurred. It was a remarkable year, in the ordinary way.

           

Teenagers don’t think about history, or not often. I handled the errands, and when that was done, went to a coffee shop to wait for the mall to open. That got me to ten o’clock—then I wandered around the mall for a while, and drank several cups of tea. Parmi and Nicole came at twelve, and the wandering changed to a plural tense. Nightmare on Elm Street 2 was on at one, so we went to see that.

After the movie, we loitered in the food court. I do remember Nicole, cracking jokes about the film—and it was awful, after all. Normally, I would have laughed, but I didn’t.  I do remember, though, that I felt a peculiar sense of unease, something nagging at me—an emotional blister. I stared past their faces and thought about the snow. Parmi asked me whether the movie had given me a case of the jitters, and I started.

“No, no, vos byad movie, darlink,” I said. “zat ees all.” Parmi laughed.

“Yes, it was. So why are you scared?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just cold!”

“That’s stupid. I’ll get you a hot chocolate.” Parmi bounced off with my two-dollar bill in hand.

Nicole patted my hand. “It’s okay to be scared.” I blinked at her.

“I’m fine, really. Just spacing out. I think I didn’t get enough sleep or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“Hot chocolate!” Parmi grinned at me, set the cup down on the table. I smiled and wrapped my hands around it, and tried to ignore the anxious look in her eyes.

“Thanks.” I sipped it, but I couldn’t process the taste.

I wondered what Rod would say about this. He would laugh, probably—put an arm around my shoulders, tell me not to get so panicky—and yes, he would have bought me a cup of something hot and sweet. And—

“Are you okay? You’re really pale,” Nicole said.

“Actually, I think the movie kinda shook me up. Uh…I hate to be a wet blanket, but would you guys mind if I went home and took a nap? I don’t feel so hot.“

“Yeah, okay.” They looked disappointed, and I apologized, but, after all, being good friends, they didn’t make an issue of it.

I wished, later, that I’d said more, because it was the last time I saw them for years.

            By the time I got home, it was only four o’clock. It had stopped snowing, but it was still cold, and windy, too. Rod didn’t expect me until eight, I suppose; normally, I’d have made a day of it.

            As I let down the garage door and walked into the house, I realised that most of the lights were off.

It was so still. I called out again, and there was no answer. My pulse was speeding up, and my mouth was drying. I shouldn’t have been scared, really, but I was. It was cold, over-cast, and I’d just seen a horror movie.

There was no logical reason for Rodya’s silence. Then, it occurred to me that he might have decided to go to his room, instead of sitting on the couch in the den. That would have been a little more usual; he was a creature of habit. Still, to look for him meant I had to go downstairs, to the basement. I hate basements to this day.

As I opened the door and descended, the creaking of the stairs made me even jumpier than I already was. My feet seemed unnaturally loud, clattering loudly on the wood. I thought I could hear music—well, there was a percussion solo going on at the moment.

Sure enough, the music revealed itself as Soviet rock-and-roll—my pulse slowed. (To give you an idea of the sound, Gogol Bordello hadn’t formed yet, but if they’d been around, that would have been the sort of music Rod would have listened to.)

            Most of the lights down there were off, but a little light was seeping through the space between the door and the wall. I knocked on the door, and there was still no answer, so I opened it. 

*****

Thanks for returning, ladies, gents, and people in-between. For more delightfully witty commentary. new works, some politics, and other phuquerie, you can find me at Twitter and on Tumblr. Don't forget to check back on Sundays to get your weekly fix. This is your SciFiMagpie, over and out!

How to Not Accidentally A Racism: A Meditation on Cultural Appropriation

NOTE: With recent information at my disposal, I have edited this post a bit to reflect new knowledge and limits on my existing information. 

Hello, hello!
At long last, I have returned from my writing and social-networking coma! Now that it's Fall, you can bet on more regular updates--at least once a week, on Sundays. I hope to bring extra content during the week too. Lately things have been picking up in pace since I joined a writer's guild, and that's eaten some time...anyway *throat clearing noises*...let's move along, shall we?
I had heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender in times of yore, but between one thing and another, didn't really get into it. It looked lame, frankly, and from the fragmentary episode snatches I did see, nothing caught my attention. Elemental magic-users, a semi-anime style, teenagers saving the world; it sounded fairly conventional. Imagine my shock, then, when I finally had the opportunity to watch the series in full with a friend. A mere seven years after its début in 2005, I have discovered that it is truly fantastic.
I know what you're all thinking, and it's okay, I already made you a picture.

Source. The "Slowpoke #27" was done by me, but otherwise, the meme is common property of the internet.

So, yes. I'm an idiot and I missed out on something fantastic until now. Avatar is a unique series for a few reasons--created by Americans, animated by Koreans, set in a fictional mediaeval Asian world that draws on (at my count) Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, Tibetan, Korean, Indian, and Southern U.S. traditions for its inspiration. The cast is not white-washed (for the most part, although there are no black people anywhere). As if the non-Western mediaeval setting wasn't enough of a pleasant change, truly excellent writing and character development of the surprisingly realistic child protagonists really sold me.
However, I also spend a great deal of time on Regretsy, a site devoted to finding silly, fraudulent, badly made, overpriced, and otherwise wonderfully awful things on the 'handmade' art market, Etsy. One of the things that also falls under Regretsy's marvellous scope of interest is the unintentionally racist creations of hipsters who appropriate others' cultures for style reasons. For instance, more than a few assholes have made 'native inspired' feather headbands designed to imitate the ritually significant headdresses worn by Plains tribes.

What's wrong with that? Lesson time, kids.

This is an example of cultural appropriation. Obviously, using the ritually significant symbols and trappings of another culture without awareness of their significance is bad. Appropriation overlaps with cultural diffusion and multiculturalism. Being a Canadian and more importantly, being naturally curious, I've certainly been able to take advantage of ideas from other cultures as I learned about them. I've taken classes on bellydancing and enjoy eating Indian food, have several Chinese-style cloisonne boxes in my collection of curios, and in a hundred other small ways, have things and ideas that have come from non-Western or non-Canadian sources in my life.

So...what about Avatar, again?

Back to the Avatar series, then, and to writing in general. The Avatar story borrows from a variety of religious sources, as well as using the aesthetics and ideas of multiple cultures--most of which are ignored or oppressed here in the Western mainstream. Avatar is hardly the only series to borrow Eastern ideas; Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time (bleh) both use Oriental cultures to contrast their primarily Western settings. Lovecraft, one of my favourite writers, had a nasty and irritating way of making almost all of his antagonists, well, non-European and especially non-Anglo Saxon. Even a hardcore fan can't ignore that disgusting side of his writing. More to the point, the Elder Gods sound suspiciously similar to Aztec and African gods both in motif and in aesthetic.

Source. Hey look, a weird and twisted ancient god. Big coincidence.

The borrowing and misunderstanding of exotic styles from distant locations has occurred between East and West, North and South, for hundreds of years. Now, however, we're aware enough and have access to information about other cultures. In essence, we have no excuses for racism. There is ignorance, but really, a few respectful questions and an apology will go along way. It is not that hard to fix things. So--is it okay to borrow significant ideas from others and to modify them?

Some people--especially those who are oppressed or screwed over by the mainstream cultures--say they want the culturally dominant to keep their damn hands off of other cultures' ideas. Certainly, in WoT, there were quite a few examples of the Chinese culture being portrayed in a pretty caricatured, racist fashion. Even Game of Thrones does this, though in its defense, the Westerners are portrayed as savages as well. Still, these and other fantasy works tend to use Oriental or non-British cultures as easy enemies, or conversely, romanticise 'noble savages' and non-Westerners in a way that really just becomes a perverse ego-wank of self-loathing.

Unfortunately there is little else on the market. You should think about this for a while. Then you should be horrified. Traditional fantasy is pretty much a dichotomy: go European or get out. LGBTQ issues are also generally ignored, although this is beginning to change. Still, the stories are filtered through a very narrow set of lenses, and modernized lenses at that.

Avatar, though, has taught me that things can be done differently.There's a fine line between accidental racism and borrowing a cool idea to enhance your fantasy/sci fi world. It's not hard to make a stupid mistake, but it's much easier to fix it and apologize so you can move on with life. As writers of the fantastic, we have a duty to build on existing literature, not rewrite the same stories over and over.

What's different, you say? Who can I read? Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson. Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust. Wolf at the Door by Joyce Chng. Start searching for 'Asian fantasy' and don't just assume that anime alone will give you the required diet of cultural diversity. Not only will it be good for your soul, it will be damned fun and humbling.

How do you write fantasy with elements you're not used to without screwing it up? I hear you say. That can be tricky--your idea of a tribute to a culture's identity might actually just be a mess or something very offensive, simply because of a lack of context.

It's okay, though. Take a deep breath. Ask people from the source culture if they find your work or ideas offensive. Ask if what you're doing is disrespectful, and if it is, modify it and ask for input. Do your research. Field test it with people. Most importantly, write people, not caricatures.

That's it. Problem solved.

Source. Phuque yeah.
Or is it? I want to hear you weigh in! Tell me about your cultural appropriation experiences in the comments.

*****

Thanks for returning, ladies, gents, and people in-between. For more delightfully witty commentary, you can find me at Twitter and on Tumblr. This is your SciFiMagpie, over and out!

IT'S HERE: The Stolen: Two Short Stories

Hi everyone!

Well, as those of you who follow me on Twitter already know...The Stolen: Two Short Stories has been released!

Here is where you can buy the Smashwords edition.

...and here is where you can buy it for Kindle.

I don't think I really need to tell you how excited I am about this. I am truly ecstatic and was swearing joyfully all over Twitter as I finally finished the cover edits, formatting, and uploads. Believe me, it was...hard to miss. Still, if you've somehow missed my press releases, tweets, and updates this week, I'll give you a quick run-down.

Source. The illustration was done by the marvelous Karissa Richards, and, of course, I own the image. And yes, that is a hamster on Mars.

The first short story, The Fields, is based on a nightmare I had, and concerns the exploits of a hardened criminal within the penal system of a hardened, technologically backwards colony. Clarice is not a good person, but she's about to learn a whole new level of criminality during her re-education. The literary traditions I follow had a big impact on the writing style in the work, and I hope you will enjoy sharing this nightmare.

The second short story, Wordthieves, was actually mentioned on here a few times. Later this week or thereabouts, I'll have a lovely long post about my influences for this work. Suffice to say, if you like hamsters, religious extremism, candy, hippies, and totalitarianism, with just a sprinkling of sex--I have the book for you! There is also a generous pinch of untranslateable words and some non-English cussing, so you can improve your vocabulary while you're enjoying a gripping story. Of course, I have official summaries posted on both Smashwords and Amazon as well, but you heard the real scoop here first!

A quick PS before I close this post off--the Smashwords link has an extended sample, so if you want a good taste of the work, download that sample!

*****

That's all for today, but there will be more awesomeness in the days to come--including that backstory treat! Keep an eye on new releases by following on Twitter at SciFiMagpie and on Tumblr at SciFiMagpie. Don't forget to buy and share The Stolen: Two Short Stories; you'll be glad you did. This is your SciFiMagpie, over and out for now!