Idle Voyages: Writing with Friends

 

One of the best things about being a writer is having the opportunity to work and collaborate with other authors.  It’s especially fun when those authors are your friends.

Idle Voyages is the working title of an anthology of short stories (20,000 words or less)  in which I’ve been invited to contribute.  It’s a collection of stories from members of what we affectionately refer to as the HMS Slush Brain.  Angela B. Chrysler  is not only the captain of the crew, she’s also spearheading the project.

We’re in the rough stages of development for now, but here is a list of people who are contributing.

Angela B. Chrysler:  Her project is a steampunk fantasy set in a dystopian-desert planet.

Bio:  Angela B. Chrysler is a writer, logician, philosopher, and die-hard nerd who studies theology, historical linguistics, music composition, and medieval European history in New York with a dry sense of humor and an unusual sense of sarcasm. She lives in a garden with her family and cats.
While writing, Ms. Chrysler fuzzies her cats and survives on coffee, Guinness, and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe who strongly influences her style to this day. When she is not writing, she enables her addictions to all things nerdy, and reads everything she can get her hands on no matter the genre. Occasionally, she finds time to garden, mother her three children, and debate with her life-long friend who she eventually married

C.L. Schneider:  The author of the Crown of Stones trilogy is bringing Ian back for a brief side story.  Ian is a great character, and I’ll be glad to see him again even if it’s only for a short time (No spoilers…I haven’t finished reading the other two books in Crown of Stones yet).

Bio:  C. L. Schneider was born in a small Kansas town on the Missouri River.  Growing up in a family of readers, all with diverse interests, she developed an early and avid love for the written word. Her fascination with science fiction stories and anything supernatural, as well as a keen interest in the Middle Ages, drew her to fantasy. At the age of sixteen, she wrote her first, full-length novel on a typewriter in her parent’s living room.

 Her first published work, The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price, is an epic fantasy. The first in a trilogy, Magic-Price is a gripping account of one man’s struggle to accept who and what he is. It’s the journey of a flawed hero, a fallen race, and a land at war. A page-turning tale of prejudice, betrayal, secrets and lies.

“The Crown of Stones evolved from the creation of my protagonist, Ian Troy. I wanted to construct not just a character, but a person that I, as a reader, would want to get lost in. One that would embody the characters I’d come to love from the stories I read in my childhood home, so many years ago. My goal was to develop a character that was capable of being both a cowboy and an outlaw, a detective when he needs to be, a monster when he can’t help it, and a hero even when he tries not to be.”

C. L. Schneider lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband and two sons.  With the Crown of Stones Trilogy complete, her current work in progress is an urban fantasy due out winter 2016/2017.

M.L.S. Weech (that’s me) I’ll be working on a story called Sojourn in Despair.  Sojourn features a character from my seventh book, Images of Truth from my Perception of War series.  The fighter to the left is actually the design for one of the fighters in Images of Truth.  Concept art for Elele is still underway, but I’m easily distracted and haven’t gotten back to my amazing friend and concept artist.

Elele is a character that I fell in love with while writing Images.  She comes from an alien race loosely based on Jewish cultures in a space opera setting which combines WWII with the War on Terror.  Elele will eventually have her own book in the series, but when Angela asked who was interested in participating in this project, Elele essentially threatened to scream in my imaginary ear until I agreed to participate.

Things are still coming together for the project, but we’ve all promised to try and get our work to Angela by December.  From there, the captain will work on finalizing everything.  It’s simply an honor to have the chance to take part in such a project.  I’m excited to write something new and have my name beside these other fantastic authors.  I’ll work to keep you posted until then.

Thanks for reading,
Matt