#barium deep

I finished the first season. Wow. I know I just wrote about Prodigy last week, but I have to weigh in again. Continue reading Star Trek: Prodigy follow-up

I had the opportunity to connect with an agent while I was at Arisia, a friend of a friend, and I’ve really appreciated speaking with her since. She was generous enough to share her insight on my query letter for Bury’em Deep. I’m very grateful. My key takeaway is that my past edits of my query letter have not helped. I created distance from Barry’s emotional throughline. That made it harder for…

Katie Slivensky’s The Countdown Conspiracy is an upper middle grade adventure story all about six young astronaut candidates preparing for an international mission to Mars. Set on a near-future Earth still recovering from a global war fought over asteroid-mining rights, the story begins with a captivating slow burn and piles of intrigue. The Countdown Conspiracy builds from there to high stakes…

It’s been a while since I last wrote about Deep in Trouble, Cesi’s sequel to Bury’em Deep. A friend of mine inhaled Bury’em Deep recently, and her enthusiasm has reinvigorated mine. It’s also prompted me to revisit the setting and my ideas for how Deep in Trouble would work, and I’ve started making progress again! (more…) “”

Mining my boarding school experience for Cesium Deep

This one is going to be a little more personal. Also a little more disjointed.

I went to a mixed boarding / day school for high school. I was there as a boarder.

My time in my dorm was both great and awful. It’s part of where I’m drawing inspiration for the story I’m writing about Cesium Deep.

When I say that my time in my dorm was great, I mean that I met and made friends with some awesome…

When I was first writing Bury’em Deep, the editor I was working with through my mentorship program asked me to write scenes from inside Cesi’s head. She wanted, ideally, for the book to include sections or chapters from Cesi’s perspective.

It was a good idea, and (more…)

The Music Behind Bury’em Deep

This is an incomplete list of the songs and artists that built the soundscape I tried to stay in while writing Bury’em Deep (and editing and rewriting it, and, well, you know).

The initial bulk of the music was industrial, with a few other genres tossed in. I think there was something about the frequently wordless, highly rhythmic, often distorted quality of that music that drove my sense of…

What year is Bury’em Deep set in?

What year is it? Why don’t I say?

Well, for one thing I don’t want (more…)