Alyc Helms's Blog, page 5

The Clarion Workshops (Clarion in San Diego and Clarion West in Seattle) are by-audition workshops for writers of speculative fiction (SF/Fantasy/Horror). For six weeks during the summer, eighteen writers come together under the instruction of six seasoned masters of genre. The students churn out one story and seventeen critiques a week. It’s an intense experience, the sort that can break people down and break them through to becoming better writers. The intensity of the shared experience can...

My fingers are sore, but my mantle is full. With two days to go, I finished the amigurumi for the Robots and Goons reading at Borderlands Books tomorrow.

Did I mention there’s a reading at Borderlands Books tomorrow? Sunday, June 5 at 3pm. Peter Tieryas, Sunil Patel, Sarah Gailey, and me! Where I will be reading from The Conclave of Shadow and giving away amigurumi octopodes!

(In tangentially-related news, there’s also a Goodreads Giveaway going on right now for The Dragons of Heaven, which w...

Back when I was doing RenFaire, I learned to sew, spin raw wool with a drop spindle, and even do a bit of weaving, but I never got into the knitting or crocheting areas of the textile arts. I bought my socks at Target and refused to wear a tam o’shanter, so there didn’t seem to be much point.

A few weeks ago, I decided to teach myself to crochet so I could make amigurumi octopodes – in part because I suddenly had all this free time after turning in the final draft of Conclave, and in part bec...

Preorders and reviews are an author’s best friends!

The Conclave of Shadow

The Conclave of Shadow, by Alyc Helms
Published: July 2016
Publisher: Angry Robot
ISBN: 9780857665188

The line between enemy and ally is thinner than a shadow’s edge.

Ever since she saved the spirit guardians of China by selling out to her worst enemy, Missy Masters — a.k.a. the pulp hero Mr. Mystic — has been laying low. But when knights serving the Conclave of Shadow steal secret technology from a museum exhibit on t...

Back in mid-August 2015, Angry Robot sent me a gorgeous final cover for the second book in the Missy Masters series (in my head it will always be ‘The Adventures of Mr. Mystic’ but Missy Masters is easier for sales databases and stuff). The Qwillery did a lovely cover-reveal post. I put up the cover as my desktop wallpaper.

I failed to actually write an announcement post about the cover.

See, it was such a great cover… it felt entirely wrong to write a post about it when I didn’t have a great...

We’re coming close to the six-month mark since the publication of THE DRAGONS OF HEAVEN, and it has been doing fairly well by most rubrics. The one place it seems to be lagging is in reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and that’s largely on me for being reluctant to be pushy about encouraging people to review.

Reviews matter, though. Both Amazon and Goodreads (but especially Amazon) have algorithms that kick in promotional visibility at various levels. For example, 25 reviews on Amazon makes a b...

I have asked to be removed from programming unless WFC 2015 revisits its harassment policy:

Harassment Policy
In New York State harassment is a defined criminal offense. None of the Committee, Hotel or City Center staff are trained to recognize the difference between legal harassment and incorrect/uncivil behavior. We have consulted with the Saratoga County District Attorney and the City of Saratoga Springs Police Department and been advised to report any incidents to the Police Department so...

Leroy from Fame tells life to talk to the hand.

My grandmother, Bettie, passed away a few weeks ago. And I’m not doing so well because of it.

In part, this is grief at her passing. She was my last living grandparent (step-grandparents included). I barely knew her growing up, but I got to know her better as an adult. Some of my friend probably remember me bragging about her as my ‘sexy’ grandmother who still wore 4-inch heels into her late 90s and had boyfriends decades her junior. Who wore st...

Today’s the second half of my book birthday, with the US/CAN print version of The Dragons of Heaven hitting the shelves. I’m traveling on business, so celebrations have been postponed until I can celebrate with family and loved ones.

I was feeling a little down about this, but then Brenta Blevins–my CW littermate, Cory Skerry’s nemesis, and a Mad Genius–posted a pic of her insanely photogenic new kitty, Abby, sitting next to her copy of Dragons, and it cheered me enormously.

Then someone at...

Book Birthday, that is. It’s official. I’m a published novelist: http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Heaven-Alyc-Helms-ebook/dp/B00LKIBYQA/

This is how I plan to celebrate today:

1. Tea, Toast, Incense, and Faeries (my usual morning ritual)
2. Unplug to input my handwritten revisions on Chiaroscuro
3. Chew my fingers off to keep from obsessively checking the internet
4. Shower. Nap. Drive to the Peninsula
5. Play in Marie Brennan’s L5R game, wherein I have been promised romantic hijinks for my bish...