December | 2014 | Bad Menagerie

HALF LIFE is out! Also, “Rio Adopts a Puppy” is a thing. For real.

Dec 25 2014

The happiest of holidays to everyone who is celebrating today! Whee!

Today is also RELEASE DAY of the second Cas Russell book, Half Life. *confetti*

I’m so excited, folks! SO EXCITED!!

You can buy or talk about the book ALL OF THE PLACES:

I promise both kittens and robots. If you’d like the full blurb (which is a little spoilery but not TOO much), see below.

ALSO! For all the Rio fans out there (*edges slowly away from you*), I wrote a short story to go with this book. The genesis of this short was when Bad Menagerie’s own Lady Hedgepig was helping me brainstorm for book 4. Lady Hedgepig is one of the aforementioned Rio fans (*edges slowly away from her too*), and the first thing she said when I asked for help brainstorming was, “RIO ADOPTS A PUPPY!”

. . .

I believe my response was something along the lines of, “NOT HELPING!”

But then, you know. I had to write it. Because Rio. And a puppy.

So, now, for all your warm and fuzzy murdering sadist needs, this actually exists:

A Neurological Study on the Effects of Canine Appeal on Psychopathy
or
RIO ADOPTS A PUPPY

IT IS A THING IT EXISTS.

The story is available online to mailing list subscribers here (put your email in my paws and you’ll get a password to read it, MWAHAHA). It’s best read right after Half Life, as the end dovetails into a scene from the book, but you can be a rebel and read them in reverse if you really want to.

If you don’t want to give me your email address because you’re afraid I’m EVIL AND MIGHT DO EVIL THINGS WITH IT (and I don’t blame you, considering I just wrote a story about a sadistic psychopath and a puppy), the story will be available for purchase cheaply from all retailers on January 25. It’s up for preorder on Amazon already, more to follow soon!

And remember! You can buy Half Life ALL OF THE PLACES!

Cas Russell is back — and so is her deadly supermath.

Cas may be an antisocial mercenary who uses her instant calculating skills to mow down enemies, but she’s trying hard to build up a handful of morals. So when she’s hired by an anguished father to rescue his kid from an evil tech conglomerate, it seems like the perfect job to use for ethics practice.

Then she finds her client’s daughter . . . who is a robot.

The researchers who own the ’bot will stop at nothing to get it back, but the kid’s just real enough for Cas to want to protect her — even though she knows she’s risking everything for a collection of metal and wires. But when the case blows up in her face, it plunges Cas into the crossfire of a massive, decades-long corporate espionage war.

Cas knows logically that she isn’t saving a child. She’s stealing a piece of technology, one expensive and high-stakes enough that spiriting it away is going to get innocent people killed. But she has a distraught father on one hand and a robot programmed to act like a distraught daughter on the other, and she’s never been able to sit by when a kid is in trouble — even a fake one.

Screw morals and ethics. All Cas wants to do is save one little girl.

HALF LIFE is now available for preorder!

Dec 22 2014

Half Life, the sequel to Zero Sum Game, is now available for preorder from most major retailers!

Amazon

Amazon UK

Kobo

Apple

Barnes and Noble does not allow preorder (and also closes to uploads for the holidays), but it will be available there as close as possible to at the other stores.

For retailers who support preorder, HALF LIFE will become available Christmas Day!

The Killing – the first two seasons

Dec 18 2014

Source: IMDB

Police procedurals don’t usually lure me, but the TV series The Killing reeled me in. In one weekend, I binged the first two seasons on Netflix. The show is tense, suspenseful, and gripping. And really bleak, both visually and emotionally.

In the first two seasons, two homicide detectives – Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) – investigate the murder of a teen girl in Seattle, a city that doesn’t seem to get a single ray of sunshine through all 26 episodes. Almost all scenes are washes of gray, and so are the characters. Family secrets, political intrigue, and personal struggles gnarl the case. And there are plenty of twists and red herrings to keep you guessing.

As complex as its mystery, The Killing isn’t all plot. The two leads are deeply carved and wonderfully played. Linden is hard, aloof, and mostly not very nice, but she betrays tenderness. She cares, perhaps too much. As her own rough past surfaces, you begin to understand the fears that drive Linden’s obsession with the case. Her single-mindedness may be great for solving crimes, but threatens everything else: her relationship with her son, her rapport with her partner, and her own mental cohesion. Ironically, it’s when Linden is at her toughest do you see the most of her vulnerability. I’m not sure if I totally like her, but she is definitely engaging.

Her partner Holder is a likeable dude that brings levity to an otherwise deathly serious show. As a detective new to homicide, Holder is the apprentice to the veteran Linden. But Holder offers more than what you would expect. He may seem silly, even loserish at times, but under the slacker veneer is a man who is thoughtful and caring, with much to contribute to the partnership. It’s no surprise that he may be driven by some of his own dark history as well.

The Killing isn’t for everyone. It is slow, but I didn’t mind the pace because I was absorbed. The show, basically a Seattle noir with a Nordic vibe, reminds me of the Swedish Stieg Larsson movies. After all, The Killing is a remake of a Danish TV show. Also, if you like the miniseries Top of the Lake*, you will probably like The Killing. Both have the same measured pace, depressing vibe, and intimate focus on a female detective.

The first story arc spans the first two seasons (13 episodes each). Much to my disappointment, the series was canceled after four seasons. Boo.

* Top of the Lake is a beautifully filmed missing-persons mystery set in New Zealand, starring Elisabeth Moss. Those who have seen the TV series Mad Men will recognize her as Peggy Olson. She is equally compelling in both shows.

That Certain Feel of a Battle Lost

Dec 15 2014

My daughter doesn’t tweet all that much, so when she sends out a link, I sit up and take notice. Last weekend she tweeted a link to the powerful speech Shonda Rhimes’ gave upon her acceptance of The Hollywood Reporter’s Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, which recognizes a woman in the entertainment industry who is a pioneer and leader in the industry.

For those unfamiliar with Ms. Rhimes, she’s a serious force in Hollywood whose writing and executive producer credits include Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, among many others. She also happens, in her words, to have been “born with an awesome vagina and really gorgeous brown skin.” So when Ms. Rhimes speaks of breaking through a glass ceiling, she ain’t exaggerating. But the power of her speech, the extraordinary beauty of it, is that she doesn’t take much credit for it. Ms. Rhimes eloquently gives the lion’s share of credit to the pioneering women before her. The ones who didn’t break through, but who weakened the glass ahead of her. If you read the speech (linked below), I suspect you won’t come away unmoved.

The point she makes is one I’ve been struggling with recently. With all the work that had been done by my mother’s generation, especially in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I can’t shake the feeling women have been pushed down a steep section of stairway. And I can’t help but look at my own generation–and myself–and wonder how we allowed it. I admit, it’s extraordinarily disheartening.

In 1968, Dihanne Carroll, an African American woman, had the lead role on her own show, Julia, where she played a widowed, single mother supporting her family as a nurse. Talk about groundbreaking. (Too bad she was the first, and unfortunately last, African American woman to reach such heights until Scandal debuted in 2012. But that’s a post for another day.) At the same time Julia was on the air, The Carol Burnett Show was among the most popular shows on television, and shortly after came The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Maude. Women had a prominent leading presence on TV, cast as smart, funny, capable and independent. Role models aplenty.

When I graduated from high school and entered college in 1982, there were ZERO majors off limits to women. I had sorority sisters majoring in business, communications, pre-med, engineering and architecture. We went to work and found ourselves on more equal footing with men than we had imagined we would be. Of course, early days. The glass ceiling was there, we simply hadn’t risen high enough to encounter it quite yet. Still, many of us felt confident we would be unaffected by that old idea. The mythical ceiling, after all, been shattered by our elders. Ah, the optimism of youth. Or maybe laziness.

Our early success came too easy. Our mothers and grandmothers had paved a deep trail, one earned by lawsuits and demands for equal opportunity, insistence on a workplace free of sexual harassment, and we didn’t have to break much new ground. We just plodded through the trail, stomped it down a little harder. When I looked around the office at my first job, I saw more women than men and felt a little shiver of triumph.

Hubris, more like.

Because when I looked up again in the 1990’s, women were back to being portrayed in media as little more than sexual beings, or existing to serve a man. Something felt very backward to me, as if we’d made a sudden U-turn. When I would decry how women were depicted in, for example, music videos, I was told—by younger women—I was old-fashioned, or worse, that my objection meant I wanted to rob those women of their choice to appear in such videos. That I was trying to rob them of the power they’d earned to choose to be sexualized in such a way. Ooookayyyyy.

And now, fast forward to the new millennium, where women have more workplace muscle than ever, but somehow it’s acceptable for a guy to shove a woman’s head under the proverbial water and call her a slut and threaten to rape her openly on social media, or on comment boards. Our teenage boys casually use the verb “rape,” having apparently lost all understanding of the true meaning of the word. Women are portrayed on shows like Game of Thrones being violently assaulted, and the message is sickeningly mixed by the inclusion of what sounds like pleasurable moans in the background.

Yeah, I’m pretty positive the work my mother’s generation did has suffered a serious blow. Maybe damage inflicted by the patriarchy, maybe by hubris, maybe by entitlement. Whatever the cause, it’s happened.

I suppose great strides in human enlightenment aren’t taken on a linear path. As in war, there are battles lost and battles won, and this certainly isn’t the Women’s Movement’s version of Waterloo. But it feels bad right now. At least it does to me, having gotten a fleeting glimpse of what I naively thought would be a straight-line trajectory.

So I’m uplifted by, and thankful for, people like Shonda Rhimes. Women who, despite the noise, the long odds and ugliness with which they are occasionally (or frequently) confronted, manage to scope out the cracks in the ceiling and power through. I take from her speech the hopeful feeling that my generation wasn’t as stagnant as it feels we were, and the hope that those following behind her will be better equipped to take a stand at the next landing, will not cede ground to threat and disrespect and gratuitous sexualization, will, instead, power up another flight. Or three.

Shonda Rhimes Sherry Lansing Leadership Award Acceptance Speech

Twas The Night Before Christmas, Writer Style

Dec 12 2014

(With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore, whom I have shamelessly ripped off).

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the land,
Writers were all cursing, “I do not understand!”

The Shark says to query, but Bookends says no,

How am I supposed to know when to hit go?

All year I have edited, polished each word,

December is awful for queries I’ve heard.

With so much NaNo nonsense hitting agents desks,

Each new one is looking more and more Kafkaesque.

Then comes Christmas time, and so many will say,

Now’s no time for queries, agents are all away.

Out at bookish parties, full of festive cheer,

They won’t open their inbox, until the New Year.

But writers are eager to show off their book,

They must get an agent by hook or by crook.

So they work themselves up into a frenzied state,

They think tiny errors might be make or break.

Their betas will tell them, now start on something new,

Instead they surf the net, they must know what to do!

Should they submit now, or will it kill all chance?

These agents they lead us on a merry dance!

Everyone tells them now is not the right time,

To query agents, they’ll get lost in the line.

But what if this book is their Jack Reacher version?

That will cause the agent to have a conversion?

The book that will make her dance, and shout out with glee,

This is just perfect as a new novel for me.

It needs no more edits, it’s done and complete,

The deal it will do me will taste so darn sweet.

The writer checks forums, please say what is best,

Until she has queried she will get no rest.

Chill out and relax, there’s no right answer they say,

Still she keeps worrying through the whole of the day.

If I don’t query now, then when shall it be done?

I’ve heard in the summer they’re all out in the sun.

No agent’s at work, work’s no fun, it’s too hot,

The writer’s is really a confusing lot.

So many rules set out to trip them all up,
All they want is to drink from the publishing cup.

Can it really be true that just one errant word,

Is enough to get their agent dreams all deferred?

Desperately trying to tick all the boxes,

Will this be the manuscript that just outfoxes,

The vigilant intern who knows it’s their job,

To protect their boss from the writer’s lynch mob.

So now the writer, festively optimistic,
Redrafts the query showing their feats linguistic
It seems so stupid, idiotic, absurd,

To listen to all the strange stories you’ve heard.

About when to query and when you should not,

It matters little if your writing’s red hot,

If the prose is all tight, and the grammar is clean,

If you’ve checked every word, polished it to a sheen.

However there’s just one final thing to beware,

Even if your book fits their wish list and has flair,

Agents who say they are closed to all queries,

Should not be contacted and you should be leery!

Cover reveal, HALF LIFE: The Sequel to Zero Sum Game! Coming by the end of the year!

Dec 11 2014

Half Life (Russell’s Attic Book #2)

Cas Russell is back — and so is her deadly supermath.

Cas may be an antisocial mercenary who uses her instant calculating skills to mow down enemies, but she’s trying hard to build up a handful of morals. So when she’s hired by an anguished father to rescue his kid from an evil tech conglomerate, it seems like the perfect job to use for ethics practice.

Then she finds her client’s daughter . . . who is a robot.

The researchers who own the ’bot will stop at nothing to get it back, but the kid’s just real enough for Cas to want to protect her — even though she knows she’s risking everything for a collection of metal and wires. But when the case blows up in her face, it plunges Cas into the crossfire of a massive, decades-long corporate espionage war.

Cas knows logically that she isn’t saving a child. She’s stealing a piece of technology, one expensive and high-stakes enough that spiriting it away is going to get innocent people killed. But she has a distraught father on one hand and a robot programmed to act like a distraught daughter on the other, and she’s never been able to sit by when a kid is in trouble — even a fake one.

Screw morals and ethics. All Cas wants to do is save one little girl.

It is ALMOST READY FOR RELEASE! Coming by the end of the year! ARCs will be going out next week!

Also, dropping shortly thereafter, and FREE to my mailing list subscribers, will be the short story:

Yes, the short RIO ADOPTS A PUPPY is a real and actual thing that is happening! I kid you not! Rio and a puppy . . . the world will never be the same.

#ICantBreathe

Dec 05 2014

On Twitter, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has been trending for a while now, only to be rebutted by hashtags like #AllLivesMatter.

#AllLivesMatter completely misses the point of #BlackLivesMatter. It snatches away the attention from the problem and makes it sound as though non-Black people go through the same treatment that Black people do. It’s pretty much the equivalent of #NotAllMen in answer to the #YesAllWomen campaign.

As a cow of Asian descent, I don’t live in fear that I might one day be killed by a cop because of my skin color. When I go jogging outside, I don’t fear that people would see me running and think I’m a criminal attempting escape. When I hold up earrings to my ears at the store, I don’t fear that the salesperson is going to think I’m a shoplifter. I can wear my hoodie with my hood up without fearing that some vigilante is going to hunt me down for being suspicious. Because I am not Black, I don’t have to worry about these things. There are plenty of stereotypes which are applied to me as an Asian cow, but being at the receiving end of a cop whose immediate reaction upon seeing me is “DANGER! DANGER!” is not one of them.

Therefore, as someone who isn’t Black and doesn’t have to deal with this much danger everyday, the best thing I can do is acknowledge that there is a problem and it’s time we stop crying out “All lives matter” and . . . listen.

With that in mind, here are a few hashtags worthy of a look:

#LivingWhileBlack

#AliveWhileBlack (especially #AliveWhileBlack + teachers)

#ICantBreathe

#ThisStopsToday

Tools for Self-Publishing: KDP VAT Calculator

Dec 03 2014

Starting January 1, 2015, Amazon KDP is switching to making all self-publishers include VAT for all Amazon stores in EU countries. In other words, we have to add the tax into our list price for any sales in the European Union, or the tax will be deducted from the listed price and our actual sale (and royalties) will be based on a price lower than what we listed. See here for more information (click on EU VAT on the left).

Since the VAT rate is different in all European countries, this is a pain, so I thought I’d write myself a little calculator to reuse. Since I figured I wouldn’t be the only one who’d need it, I’m writing it as a blog post.

Notes & sources:

VAT rates taken from this Amazon KDP page, which also lists royalty brackets.
The prices automatically round to two decimal places — I do not know if Amazon rounds in the same way. If you are close to the edge of the royalty bracket, I recommend doing your own calculations, double-checking with Amazon, or adding one cent/penny to the calculated prices just in case.
VAT is calculated based on where the customer lives, not where the store is based. So everyone else in Europe shopping in these stores will have a different VAT rate deducted, and there’s no way to customize by purchaser address. If you want to ensure that your list price remains above a certain level for all EU customers, multiply by 1.27 to account for the highest VAT rate (Hungary at 27%). If you want to adjust to cover only countries that might give you significant sales, here is a list of VAT rates by country. Pick the places you think you sell a significant number of books and make sure the Amazon stores those people are likely to frequent are increased by that percentage (so, say, if you have a large Irish audience, make sure your Amazon UK price is multiplied by 1.23 instead of 1.20, to cover Ireland’s 23% VAT). Note, however, that for any VAT inclusion (including what this calculator suggests) you’ll be artificially increasing prices for everyone who shops at that particular Amazon site but doesn’t pay VAT or has a lower rate.
I am not an expert on VAT or a tax professional; this is only a calculator for convenience. I make no guarantees on the correctness of what I’ve said here or that these prices will give you exactly what you want.
If anyone has any corrections, additions, or ways to make it better, please let me know in comments!

ZERO SUM GAME now in paperback!

Dec 02 2014

I said it would happen eventually . . . and it has! ZERO SUM GAME is now available in paperback! It is here on Amazon and will be popping up on other retailers in the upcoming weeks as the publish order flits through the internets.

This book is a work of art, folks. My paperback interior designer did a ridiculous, stunning, jaw-dropping job, and my cover designer wrapped it all up in a masterpiece. It’s so pretty I want people to buy it not to read it but to see how pretty it is. Ha! The finished product is so aesthetically fabulously gorgeous I want to order a hundred of them and build a fort out of them.

(I am also five.)

The paperback is enrolled in Kindle Matchbook, so if you buy the paperback from Amazon, you get the ebook free. Whee!

And book 2 is on track for an end-of-year release . . . cover reveal coming soon!

Archive - December 2014

HALF LIFE is out! Also, “Rio Adopts a Puppy” is a thing. For real.

Like this:

HALF LIFE is now available for preorder!

Like this:

The Killing – the first two seasons

Like this:

That Certain Feel of a Battle Lost

Like this:

Twas The Night Before Christmas, Writer Style

Like this:

Cover reveal, HALF LIFE: The Sequel to Zero Sum Game! Coming by the end of the year!

Like this:

#ICantBreathe

Like this:

Tools for Self-Publishing: KDP VAT Calculator

Like this:

ZERO SUM GAME now in paperback!

Like this:

Archive - December 2014

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