Alyc Helms's Blog, page 2

We’re one month out on the drop date for THE MASK OF MIRRORS, so I decided it would be a good time to do a giveaway of my last few ARCs.

The protagonist of our book is Ren, aka Arenza Lenskaya, aka Alta Renata Viraudax, a half-Vraszenian con artist who uses her wits and her sister, Tess’s, skill at sewing to wheedle her way into the nobility. As such, fashion and clothing play a huge role in the world of our book, helping people determine who belongs — and who doesn’t.

It’s not JUST a way...

I’ve been doing a bit of writing — finishing my Moshang Week story, dragging out Chiaroscuro and dusting it off so I can finally get it out the door, things like that. But the main thing that has been helping me keep calm and carry on is the daily drawing practice. Lots of funnels, ellipses, and boxes this week, but I did do a few other things, including my first two ‘multi-day’ projects — multi-day because I spent a day sketching out the poses and getting my linework solid, then another day (f...

Last week was rough for a lot of reasons, but Moshang saved me from the worst of it.

Moshang, for those who haven’t fallen into the Endless Abyss of MXTX fandom, is the ship name for two secondary characters from Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Scum Villain Self Saving System. SVSSS is a story about a transmigrator who dies and falls into a web novel he’s been hate-reading… and lands in the role of the scum villain who is doomed to be stuffed into a pickle jar by the demon lord protagonist he abused as a...

Because I can only write for so many hours of the day (and because my mobility is still in the ‘can only stand/walk for about ten minutes before it starts to hurt’ range of things), I decided about a month ago that darn it, I was going to learn to draw!

Other than a semester of ‘art’ in high school that I’m pretty certain I got a D in, I’ve only really ever doodled in the margins of notes. I can draw decent dress/clothing design for general shapes and stuff, but… that’s about it.

So, of co...

Yesterday I finally had the surgery for my hyperparathyroidism, which was diagnosed back in October, but then an ankle injury derailed me for the entire winter (and then, y’know… there was this pandemic thing that cropped up).

One of the nice things about this particular surgery is that you know almost immediately if it was effective. My PTH level pre-surgery was 260 pg/ml (normal range is 15-75). My intraoperative level (right after they took out that problem parathyroid gland) was 29 pg/ml. So...

Recently (as in, like, this morning while I was making toast), I’ve been thinking about descriptions at the sentence level, especially as it relates to character, character voice, PoV, and worldbuilding. The opening chapter of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a masterclass in this (and, not incidentally, my favorite book opening of all time). You are dumped immediately into the world of the novel – the world of the Deliverator – from the moment those contact patches of his big, sticky tires hit ...

Two years ago in May, Marie and I said ‘let’s do this’ and launched a whirlwind four months of writing. Most weeks, we put down 10k words or more, and by the time October rolled around, we had a 225k word book draft for what would eventually become The Mask of Mirrors.

Last year in May, we got our first offer for the book and received an enthusiastic proto-response from the editor who made the offer we eventually accepted.

This year, we have a finalized book (at least, we’ve finished with ...

Yes, another writing advice post. In fact, my first such post!

Seems like an oxymoron, I know. The not another Ugh energy has more to do with how much writing advice there is out there, and my own hesitation over adding something useless or repetitive to the noise.

My editor for the Mr. Mystic books once described my writing as artisanal (which amused me greatly, because isnt all writing?). But I sort of get what he was going for with that description. I dont tend to follow expected paths or...

A few weeks ago, I knocked out some masks for myself and my brother using t-shirts because I have waaaay too many t-shirts. Copyedits for The Mask of Mirrors are turned it, and since Im in the ranks of the Covid-19 unemployed, I have some free time to make more.

 I dont really need another mask for myself, but it occurred to me that other folks among my friends might want some. The masks Im making are fairly simple. Theyre not N95-certified or HEPA-compliant or anything that fancy. Theyre...

Last summer, I started working on a collaborative project with Marie Brennan that ended up being more or less NaNoWriMo for four months straight. We finished the 220k word behemoth in October, tossed it back and forth between beta readers, our agents, and each other, and sent it out to editors this past spring.

This week, we accepted a deal from Orbit Books to publish it as the first book of the Rook and Rose trilogy! It will be coming under the joint pen name M.A. Carrick (there’s a story th...