You see…due to the intransigence of the new owners at the sf digest magazines (as well as the mystery magazines), I can no longer send them my short fiction. I actually had to pull some stories that were already sold but did not yet have a contract. Long story short, contract negotiations went extremely poorly. (I blogged about this as it went on through May on my Patreon page. Take a look at this post if you’re curious.) I will write a lot more about this in the next few weeks, because I’ll be making some changes to the way I market things.

This Kickstarter is the beginning of the changes. The Kickstarter features four science fiction novellas. Three were published in Asimov’s in the past two years, and two of the novellas are this year’s Readers Choice nominees. The third, “Weather Duty,” appeared in early 2025.

The fourth novella is brand new. It was sitting on Sheila Williams’ desk as the contract negotiations for another story started and ultimately failed. So no one has read this novella. If you back the Kickstarter, you’ll be among the first.

The Kickstarter contains all kinds of goodies as rewards. All of my Diving novels so far. All of the Retrieval Artist novels so far. More novellas. Some writing workshops.

With all of those rewards, you’ll get the novellas. I’m proud of them and I think you’ll enjoy them.

The Kickstarter just went live, so hurry on over and take a look!

I have a slight quibble with our tag line. Yes, Dean & I are two authors, but some of my other pen names make guest appearances. You’ll find some Kristine Grayson short stories in these books as well as Kris Nelscott stories. So that’s at least four authors…

You’ll also find Retrieval Artist stories here, Spade and Paladin, Winston & Ruby, some stories from Seavy Village, Diving, the Fey…and that’s just me. Dean’s stories will introduce you to some great characters, from Poker Boy to Pakhet Jones.

The Kickstarter has just gone live. You can visit it and see all the fun rewards if you click here.

Here’s the video I did for the Kickstarter. Enjoy!

“Embedded” is military sf, “Sole Survivor” is a standalone part of the Retrieval Artist series, and “Hand Fast” is dark romantic (?) fantasy.

I edited the two Fiction River Presents, and had a blast. The other stories in the volumes are wonderful, so you can’t go wrong. The stories in No Way are from the revived Pulphouse and includes some of my personal favorites: Kent Patterson’s “The Wereyam” and Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s “Savage Breasts.”

Speaking of Pulphouse and reprints, one of my personal favorite short stories, “Say Hello To My Little Friend,” appears in Pulphouse 7, which just came out. There’s a mixture of old favorites and new ones in each issue, all of which have Dean’s twisted sensibilities.

By the way, we’re holding a Kickstarter for Pulphouse instead of a subscription drive. You can get No Way as an add-on to a regular reward, along with two other goofy anthologies from Pulphouse. Take a peek. The Kickstarter has about 12 days left and then it, and all the cool backer rewards, go away forever.

This week, WMG Publishing released the Anniversary Day Saga in an 8-book boxed set. Ebook, of course, because an 8-book paper box of that series would simply not function. The Anniversary Day Saga, for those of you who don’t know, is a standalone adventure in my Retrieval Artist universe. You’ll get a heck of deal if you buy all of the books at once. You can find out more here.

Gwyneth Gibby at WMG also did this nifty book trailer to announce the release of the boxed set. Take a look.

One last thing…don’t forget the Christmas book bundle. 10 ebooks for a great price. Lots of holiday reading. If I were you, I’d send a few select friends this bundle instead of a Christmas card…

This summer looks like it’ll be the summer of bundle crossovers. Somehow, through the magic of Kris being calendar challenged in 2016, I’m in several bundles that will crossover with each other.

The first crossover occurred this week. The Moonscapes bundle that I told you about two weeks ago ends on Wednesday. If you like science fiction as much as I do, pick up this bundle. Lots of great sf, some of it hard sf, some of it space opera. If you haven’t tried my Retrieval Artist series yet, now’s the time. You can get a novella, and the most acclaimed novel in the series, along with eight other novels and a bunch more short stories. (If, of course, you pony up $15.)

The new bundle, the one that caused the crossover, is in a different genre altogether. I curated (read: edited) the Dark Crimes bundle, and packed it with my favorite authors, many of them working on my favorite series. You’ll find Montreal Emergency Room doctor Hope Sze, 1930s Berlin crime reporter Hannah Vogel, the early members of Las Vegas’s Cold Poker Gang, New Orleans Police Detective Dino LaStanza, London Detective Sergeant Jaime Brooke, Chicago PI Georgia Davis, and Nevada PI Abby Maxon, as well as a woman and a young girl on the run in Nevada (again!).

The novelists who created these memorable characters run the gamut of writing accolades—from Edgar and ITW Thriller Award nominees to critical darlings and indie sensations to Shamus winners and New York Times bestsellers. Those novelists are (in the order of their creations, above) Melissa Yi, Rebecca Cantrell, Dean Wesley Smith, O’Neal De Noux, J.F. Penn, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Annie Reed, and me.

In addition to all those great books (many of them first in a series), you’ll also find dozens of short stories by some of the biggest names in mystery fiction. Everyone from Mary Higgins Clark to Kate Wilhelm, Julie Hyzy to T. Jefferson Parker.

In addition both bundles support the charity AbleGamers.

AbleGamers makes it possible for people with disabilities to participate in the very social world of online gaming, by providing everything from equipment personalized for each person’s needs to advice to the game developers on how to make their entertainment accessible.

Entertainment takes our mind off the troubles in the world, even when we’re exploring the world’s dark corners, as we do in this bundle. As you pick up a copy of this bundle, please consider throwing in a few dollars to help AbleGamers. You’ll get great books to read, and someone somewhere will get a shiny piece of equipment to help them find a few hours of escape as well.

I’m very excited about the Dark Crimes bundle. If you’ve never read mystery and crime fiction, you’ll find this a perfect introduction to the genre. If you love the genre as much as I do, then you have a lot of great summer reading ahead. So head over to Storybundle.com, and get your copy(ies) today!

I always stop and look at the Moon. I love it so much that I write an entire series of books set on the Moon. My Retrieval Artist series is 15 books strong, but the first eight or so standalone. So if you haven’t tried the series, now’s the time to give it a glance. One of the most acclaimed books in the series, The Recovery Man, is part of a bundle. You can get it as one of five books for five dollars or ten books for fifteen. And, if you’re so inclined, you can donate a few dollars to AbleGamers, a great charity that helps people with disabilities join the gaming community, giving folks who are restricted in their ability to socialize a great way to engage with their communities.

There are some amazing books in this bundle by great writers. Annie Reed, Lisa Silverthorne, M.L. Buchman, Kevin J. Anderson, Blaze Ward, Maggie Jamieson, and Ron Collins join me and Dean in the bundle. Plus, you get the Fiction River volume that gave Dean the idea for the bundle. This is the perfect way to fill your ereader with summer reading…which you can enjoy under the stars. And beneath that Moon, in June.

Note: If you want to see January 5th’s blog early, please head here. The blog concerns the All Romance debacle.

I am having a very strange day, and it has inspired me to write a process blog. What’s a process blog? It’s essentially a think-aloud blog, as I figure things out for myself.

I am writing this blog on Wednesday, December 28, the day after Carrie Fisher died. (The day, it turns out, that Debbie Reynolds died. Good heavens.) I’ve been asked to comment on Fisher’s death by a handful of outlets, mostly by email, and I have. Plus I bombarded my Twitter feed with my opinions and sadnesses and general anger at the entire long sad year.

The number of celebrities we’ve lost is staggering, and I don’t mean people who are famous for being famous. I mean people who are famous for actually doing something, like John Glenn. Or Carrie Fisher who, in addition to playing Princess Leia (and General Organa), was a mental health advocate, script doctor, and a heck of a novelist.

We haven’t just lost famous people. Many of us have lost friends and family. I can’t count the number of people I personally know who died this year. Or rather, I refuse to count that, because the number will probably depress me further.

Yeah, I used the word depress. Several external events have brought me down toward year’s end, and I am quite aware of that. This, while the career is going well, and I’m getting a handle on some personal things, and the business(es) are growing. I had planned—note the word “planned”—to spend this last week of the year getting geared up for 2017.

The gearing didn’t happen Monday, nor did it happen Tuesday, although Tuesday, I started a different version of this blog. Because of the way today was setting up, I made some realizations, which only got compounded as the day progressed.

Yesterday, a Spanish-language TV station contacted me to talk—they said—about Carrie Fisher’s death. On camera, via Skype. Yeah, me, the woman who described herself thusly last week:

The radio people (on TV) look like someone just released them from a three-day camping trip that no one wanted to go on. Their eyes are wild, their hands go every which way, and their clothes aren’t ready for prime time.

Welcome to Kris trying to do a video about Kris.

Yeah, that woman went on TV this morning when she’s normally asleep, taking part in an interview, with translations—about Princess Leia, not Carrie Fisher (which I was ready for). It’s okay: I was in a parade of Star Wars book writers (the person who spoke before me was Troy Denning—Yay, Beloit College alums! [me, I’m a one-year alum]), and I’m sure I got lost in the noise.

Not that it matters. Because the interview itself answered my question: I’d been contacted because I wrote a Star Wars book back in the day.

Fast forward 1.5 hours and I’m doing a radio interview on my entire career, which always freaks me out a bit, ending with a ten-minute focus on Women of Futures Past, the book I edited about women in science fiction. Great interview, lots of fun—and I am so comfortable with radio. I don’t look like a dorkezoid—well, I do but no one sees me. They just hear me, which I’m much more comfortable with.

Tonight, after this blog goes live, I’ll be talking to Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn for her podcast.  If you don’t listen to the Creative Penn, you really should. I’m constantly learning stuff, and I’m frankly in awe of Joanna’s energy and ability to get so much done.

We’ll be mostly talking about this blog and the changes in the publishing side.

In between the noon interview and the midnight interview, I did some personal business, proofed a romance short story for the new romance magazine (edited by Denise Little) called Heart’s Kiss, writing this blog, planning (hoping) to write another, going to at least one business meeting, and somehow squeezing in lunch and dinner and 11,000 steps. The meeting is on planning 2017 for the business(es). And I’m not ready for that meeting because I missed most of yesterday and Monday.

And because, I realized, I’m too scattered. In a variety of ways.

In October, I wrote a blog post called “Define Yourself.”  In it, I discussed figuring out what your business is. You need to define your business in order to make it work for you.

I called myself a writer hyphenate (to use a 1990s term). Writer-editor, writer-publisher, writer-promoter, but I stressed, writer first.

And that remains the same. Only I didn’t take that particular post far enough.

I know who I am as a business person. I know what the priorities are in my various businesses.

But I was staring down the barrel of 2017, trying to figure out my writing projects. And I realized on Tuesday that the reason I couldn’t just dive in on Monday was because I hadn’t…oh, crap…defined myself.

I had defined myself in general. That’s easy. I’m a writer first, and to me, that means all the writerly things I do and have done from the old Star Wars book to new fiction I’m writing (from the romance short to the Diving universe to the historical mystery I just finished for the next Lawrence Block antho) to this blog and all the nonfiction.

But I somehow did not handle the specifics of being a writer very well in 2016.

Somewhere in 2016, I started trudging along, going with the deadlines because I had lost track of what I wanted to do with the writing.

Every year, I usually have a plan mapped out. I had one for 2016: it got nuked in early February because of some personal stuff. I never rebuilt.

Which leads me to 2017, a year I had given very little thought to. I find myself wanting to finish what I started in 2016, but not as part of a plan. Just because I’m a completest. There wasn’t any more desire to finish than that.

The problem with being in this mental space—this trudging-along space—is that I drown in all the possible projects. I have hundreds of projects I want to do right now, and no time to do them. I actually wrote an email today to an editor I’m working with, telling her what I want for 2017 is 25-hour-long days. After I sent the email, I realized I wasn’t kidding.

That feeling that I need 25-hour-long days comes from being disorganized and reactive. I’m not choosing my projects: I’m letting other people choose them for me. And when I didn’t have any advice from others, I poke away at projects leftover from last year.

Not at all ideal. In fact, bad for my writing process. Bad for me.

I need to outline 2017, generally speaking. I need to define it.

In 2014, I knew most of my focus would be on finishing the Anniversary Day Saga of the Retrieval Artist universe. The saga went slower than I wanted (everything I do is slower than I want), but I got it done. The saga went live in 2015, and as that year dawned, I realized I did not want to write much sf because—well, I had just finished 6 sf novels. So I wrote other things, including a huge Kris Nelscott novel called A Gym of Her Own. That novel isn’t out yet—WMG plans to do major publicity—but you can read a prequel to it in the current Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

You could probably call 2015 the year of the woman because I also edited Women of Futures Past that year as well.

I took a short story break, started some other projects and decided to work on Diving. As usual, that project took more time than expected and is still not done, even though I published one book in it (The Falls) and another will hit print in Asimov’s in May/June before WMG publishes it.

I lost the thread of the Diving story somewhere in the summer, and never did return to it.

And now, as I stare down 2017, I realize I need to figure out what I want. As I wrote this, I scanned the dates of Gym and realized I had dropped other plans with some books related to that as well. So I opened my 2016 file, the one I wrote at the beginning of the year, and realized the only thing I had achieved that I planned to do in 2016 was revising the contracts book. And I missed my internal deadline on that, because I had wanted it for May, and I finished it for October.

I hadn’t really defined 2016 either. This trudging-along thing started longer ago than I thought.

Hmmm. Time to rectify it.

What I will be doing in the next two days is figuring out what I want to write in 2017. Not what other people want. Not what I need to write. What will make me and my muse happy.

As I said, I am a completest. So to make me and my muse happy, I do need to finish the Diving story that I’m telling myself (in The Falls and the upcoming Runabout, which is a standalone beginning of something). I need to finish another novel/project that I’m working on. And then I need to choose between some really big projects that I’ve wanted to do for a while.

The key is figuring out what I have the energy for. Lots of research? Very dark serious stuff? Something funny or whimsical? I’m not sure.

I haven’t looked out far enough to figure any of that out, and I need to.

In defining 2017, I will be defining what kind of writing life I will be living for the next twelve months. Of course, it won’t entirely work that way. It’ll probably dissolve into something else in August or so (that’s the pattern), but it’ll give me a good start.

Combine what I determine for my writing with my editing year, and I have a tone for the year. I’m editing two different Fiction River projects, one a Grayson, the other a Fiction River special, and overseeing some of the other Fiction Rivers. We’ll be doing a Kickstarter or two on some reprint anthologies I’ve wanted to do for quite a while now.

My editing year is looking eclectic and fun.

I’ll weave in some leisure reading (already lined up), some research (which is tumbling off my desk), and subtract a lot of news reading. Keeping up with current affairs took a lot of time last year. I will spend about half of that in 2017, simply because I can’t afford to be as obsessive (time wise) as I was in 2016.

So, my process: figuring out what will make me and the muse happy. More hours of writing, more hours of reading, more hours of editing. I am getting the sense I want 2017 to be a contemplative year. As I write this, I have no trips planned (not that travel is easy for me any more) and very few scheduled disruptions (like visitors or big birthday celebrations). A quiet year might just be possible.

I don’t always like quiet years. But I’ve had so many active years of late, that a quiet year sounds just plain lovely.

I think I’ll write the occasional process blog in 2017, partly to keep myself on track. As it stands now, I plan to increase my output—not by writing faster or setting higher word count goals, but by applying more butt-to-chair time. I spent the last month finding the time leaks in my schedule, figuring out where, exactly I can gain more writing time without losing other valuable parts of my life (family hours, relaxation, exercise).

By cutting back on some of my obsessive newsgathering (old reporter habit) and changing a time-wasting part of my daily routine, I found two extra writing hours per day. Will it equal two extra writing hours per day in practice? Probably more like 1.5 hours, given the way my life works. But that’s a hefty, hefty increase in time spent writing, enough to make a large difference in my output in 2017.

Note that I’m not promising to finish more projects or do some crazy number of words per week. What I’m actually doing is giving myself more opportunity to write. I have learned that’s the most effective way to keep pressure off myself and still write more.

Writing more doesn’t mean more words. It means getting to the stories I’m dying to tell, and stories I don’t realize that I’m dying to tell. And that has me excited about the coming year.

With all of that, you’ve seen a general overview of my process. I figure out what I wanted to do, what I did, what I hope to do, and most importantly, how I hope to achieve that in 2017.

How does all of this analysis fit with the kind of day I’ve had? Because these three interviews brought home how eclectic my writing career is. In some ways, I am running a dozen different parallel careers, all of which I value. I can’t nurture a dozen careers in one year. Something has to take a focus. But with some patience and an understanding that I can define a year with the idea of doing something very different the following year, I manage to keep that drowning feeling at bay.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a year where I’ve completed all of my goals. I’m not sure I want to have that year, anyway. An acquaintance of mine died in 2016 after declaring to his wife that he had achieved all of his goals for that year (and maybe for his life). The next morning, he was gone, having slipped away in his sleep.

I’m a little terrified of the idea of making that statement (always have been). So I think I’m going to overcommit—at least on my personal don’t-tell-a-soul goals. I hope to overcommit at the beginning of every year until I’m at least 100—maybe 110.

That’s a lot more writing ahead, more than I want to think about.

Right now, I want to focus on getting 2017 planned. And then I want to focus on figuring out how to implement those plans.

And that’s a good enough start for me. In fact, that’s a better start than I would have expected, this late in the longest Wednesday on record, December 28, 2016. I still have a few hours to go before my final interview of the night.

So on to uploading this blog, and finishing those 11,000 steps. I’m only halfway there, so I have some walking to do.

I’m making some changes on this blog, including the new way to contribute some financial support. Please see my Patreon post from last week to help you understand what I’m doing with that—and why it’s still in the experimental stage.

Here’s the short version:

If you want to support the blog on an on-going basis, you can do that on Patreon.

If this particular post inspired you or hit a nerve, though, use the PayPal button below to leave a tip on the way out.

If you can’t afford to financially support the blog, no problem. You’re still welcome here. Please do me one favor. If the blog speaks to you, share it. There are share buttons below as well.

Thank you!

Click paypal.me/kristinekathrynrusch to go to PayPal.

“Business Musings: The First (?) 2017 Process Blog,” copyright © 2016 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Image at the top of the blog copyright © 2016 by © Can Stock Photo / Oakozhan

Here’s the Amazon link, but you can find the book (or the CDs or the audio version) wherever books are sold.

But right now, it’s a title for this blog post. Because at the moment, you can find my work in three different bundles.

First, for those of you who love short stories, have I got a bundle for you. Jamie Ferguson put together a bundle of twenty urban fantasy short stories, including one of mine, “The Scottish Play.” You can get all twenty short stories for $3.99. If you choose to pay just a little more, you can add a donation to the Humane Society or to Doctors Without Borders.

I have to tell you something that I don’t usually say about bundles. I have read—and loved—the work of every writer in this bundle. Most of them have had short stories in Fiction River. I can vouch for each and every story here, based on the writers alone. They’re marvelous. So pick this one up, because you’re paying less than you’d pay for the average short story anthology. This bundle will exist for less than two weeks, so head over to BundleRabbit right now for yours!

Speaking of high-powered bundles, Kevin J. Anderson put together a doozy. He calls it the Adventure Sci-Fi Bundle. This bundle includes fourteen full-length titles—twelve novels and two anthologies—as well as some sneak previews (including one for a Dune book). A portion of this bundle goes to the Challenger Learning Center for Space Science Education.

Kevin has work in here, of course, and so does Jean Rabe, and Dean Wesley Smith, and Brian Herbert, and Todd McCaffrey and many more. The anthology Launchpad is included here as well. I’ve been meaning to read that one for a while now, because everyone talks about how marvelous it is.

For those of you who’ve been putting off trying my Retrieval Artist series, here’s the perfect way to dive in. The bundle includes my book Buried Deep, which is a standalone title in the series. Locus called this book “a grand act of Sfnal imagination,”  SFRevue called it “An exciting, intricately plotted, fast-paced novel,” and The Edge said, “A high-velocity rush through cultures in full clash…as present and credible as today’s breaking news.”

This bundle will go away in a little over two weeks, so pick it up now. You can get yours at Storybundle.com.

Finally, a bit of a twist on the bundle concept. I know a lot of you don’t like to buy your bundles from the bundling website. You prefer to go to your regular ebook retailer. We moved the Not Only Humans Bundle that I was in a few weeks ago from a bundling site to Kobo, Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble. So for $9.99, you can get $72 worth of science fiction and fantasy in one really cool bundle. This bundle includes my award-nominated standalone novel, Alien Influences, and eleven other great books. This bundle is only available until July 20, so once again, act fast. (You can see all the information on the bundle here.)

So, you can get 20 short stories, and 26 novels/books for great prices right now, just in time to download them all onto your device for your summer vacation. We’ve taken care of all your reading needs–provided you go and bundle up for summer. Quickly. Before the bundles vanish.