While I am a sucker for fairytales and magic, one area of writing that I persistently search for is dystopian not-so-distant futuristic novels. Something plausible, and terrifying, that engulfs the reader in the imaginative, but hope-it-won’t-happen world characters live in.
What makes this genre so distinct from the rest of fiction is its possibility. Take The Handmaid’s Tale””Margaret Attwood created a world where everything was derived from something that happened in history. It is unfathomable to consider the world she created could become possible, but isn’t that the draw? Margaret dramatized real-world situations to tell her story. But the scariest part of the book is that much of the events have happened, or could happen in the near future. To believe something could become reality makes the story that much more interesting. It is fortune telling through a character’s lens.
Augland is such a novel. It takes readers through a not-so-distant future if greed and corporate and political power corruption became too powerful. It would take a domino effect of situations: a Civil War, a corporate giant, and a compelling AI and dream-like consumer product, to happen, but the truth is, its plausible.
The novel asks the question, if corporations genuinely wanted to gain complete control, what would it look like? Major conglomerates gain a monopoly on the corporate market, giant corporations become an essential part of our lives, and companies gain enough power to start a war and take over the government.
Augland expands the current corporate and government dynamic and exaggerates the perimeters of a world that would have the working class “employed” in exchange for mere survival within the corporation’s walls.
This dystopian world is not all bad, however. Many want to create a society that benefits the masses. This story shows what greed and power can do in the hands of corporations and AI technology, but it also shows us the damage that can be done when people rebel.
Coming December 6th! Augland, a dystopian science fiction novel that discusses the geopolitical climate of a futuristic corporate takeover. Ashton, an unknowing heroine, rallies against the corporate grain in a theme-park would full of Suits to protect those she cares about””the Suit-less.
Erin Carrougher lives in the Seattle area and was more than suited to write about the region as the location of her dystopian novel. She has a passion for storytelling and loves to envision worlds other than our own. Carrougher minored in Creative Writing and currently works as a Sales Manager, and enjoys cooking and the outdoors. Augland is Carrougher’s first novel.
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Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
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Guest Post: E.D.E. Bell Serves Up Five Simple Vegan Foods to Try
Hello. I love, read, and write fantasy fiction. Oh, and I’m a vegan.
When I sell my fantasy novels at Comic Cons, I’ll usually sneak a little reference onto the bottom of my table white board, such as Vegan, or Vegan-friendly. In my mind, this covert signal will draw vegans to my table, whispering, “I am one too. Tell me, sister, about your fiction.” Like that first moment of connection in a dystopian novel. This doesn’t happen. Instead, people skip all the other great things on the board, point right to vegan, loudly state, “Look, it says veggan!” and then laugh. This hasn’t dissuaded me from the attempt. About half of those times, someone will ask, “Vegan-friendly fantasy fiction? What’s that?” They laugh. Then when I start to answer, they leave. Even more often, they point and laugh, then turn away.
In my mind, whenever someone asks what could be vegan about fantasy, it proves to me that they’ve never been a vegan reading fantasy. In addition to a lot of the violence and war in the genre (it’s usually a central component, even outside of grimdark), the best scenes feature someone riding their steed in a fine leather vest to grab a hock of ham. I’m not even sure I know what hocks are, but I have concluded they are key to the development of fantasy heroes. So, you know, my fiction is just focused a bit differently. In fact, I think that diversity and exploration is what fantasy is all about.
I’m not here to get into all of that, though. I’m here to talk about one of Cat’s and my favorite subjects: yummy food. Now, I’m not an authority on gourmet cuisine. Go to a vegan restaurant or check out many amazing online vegan chefs for that. (I’m particularly fond of Richa Hingle.) Hey, I’m not even a great cook. But I haven’t eaten meat in almost a quarter century, so I can definitely speak to “what we eat.” Don’t worry. This is just a quick blog to spark some ideas. But if you don’t mind eating plants, here are five simple foods you could give a spin.
Here it is. Just a jar of yeast, with so many possibilities, as you will see below.1. Nutritional Yeast
This is a vegan staple, and yet so many people have never even heard of it. First, where to procure?
Any health food store should sell it in bulk, but even a standard grocery store should have a little plastic can of it. It’s rich in B vitamins and is often described with a nutty or cheesy taste. (It’s really a “yeasty” taste but no one wants to say that for obvious reasons.) Online vegans often say to sprinkle it on popcorn, but I find it a little dusty that way. Bloggers always show it on avocado toast, but the avocado doesn’t need it. I use it as a savory seasoning: in soups, in pasta, or even to make a quick vegan mac & cheese. Just get a bag and throw it on or in stuff. It’s good.
Some curried seitan slices, which I admit I ate after taking this photo. 2. Seitan
I do love a good tofu (I am so serious about tofu), and especially love when I can find local or handmade tofu. But there’s another common plant protein which with you may not be familiar. Seitan is essentially seasoned wheat gluten (or “wheat sausage” if you will), so it’s no good if you avoid gluten or eat gluten-free. Savory and rich, I really think you can’t beat a good homemade seitan. (Despite having more than one young hipster brag to me how much they love “eating Satan.”)
There are all kinds of searchable recipes, and I’d recommend using ones that incorporate lots of rich broth””and beer. (You don’t need the beer; it’s just got a flavor that works really well in seitan.) And if you don’t want to try making it, buy a good brand like Upton’s. It won’t be as juicy from the box, but still hearty and delicious.
Fresh out of the toaster oven””and I may have taken a bite.3. Packaged Plant Protein
I guess I should clarify that I’m a real-deal vegan. Without getting into it, that means I follow a belief system (an ethic) that also influences my diet. Not just a diet. This sometimes creates clashes with various plant-based diets that focus on health or shirk away from processed or commercial products.
No one should eat all packaged products. But if I had to, it might be the Gardein filets! Very likely in your grocer’s freezer too. It’s easy. Bake a couple of filets or tenders, cook a fresh tortilla (I buy ones without lard or non-vegan dough conditioners), and make a wrap with a few greens, some hot sauce, and a swipe of vegan cream cheese or mayo. I’m thinking about it now. Sigh.
Don’t tell anyone about this, but I was in a mood one night recently and made this quick cheese sauce by blending cashews; nutritional yeast; boiled potato, carrots, and onion; and salt, pepper, garlic, and paprika. Then I poured it over fries and added sliced jalapeños. It was fast, decadent, and not as high-calorie as it looks.4. Cashews!
“But I’ve had cashews,” you say. “That’s just nuts.” But vegans use them as an easy source of cream or milk. You do really need a high-quality blender (e.g. Vitamix) to make this work, but if you have one, it’s very simple. It’s recommended to soak the cashews first (we soak a bunch then freeze them), but not required. You can make a quick milk just by blending cashews, water, and your preferred sweetener (or not). I use this for delicious fresh lattes, with a touch of maple syrup.
My favorite use is a quick red sauce (e.g. vodka or masala) by blending a handful of cashews, a can of tomatoes (with green chilies, even better) along with whatever vodka or spices you want. That can be poured over pasta, or used to simmer peas and tofu, or to dip that Gardein you bought, or for whatever!
5. Just grab a plantSome stuff I have laying around, ready for my next creation.
No, seriously, I’m not trying to get out of a fifth item here, but once you think more about plants, you’ll remember something you haven’t had for a while. I mean, I can’t just name all the plants. What do I eat? Sometimes a quick stir-fry. Other times a sandwich or freshly mashed guacamole. I can make soup dozens of different ways, all delicious and inexpensive. Stock spices. Stock your favorite grains. Simmer veggies in a rich sauce. Add fennel to pasta. Slice okra. Char corn. Glaze Brussels’ sprouts. Make a slaw. Throw in herbs. Or chop hot peppers. Bake potatoes. Add some Miyoko’s cheese or butter.
I could just go on and on, because quick staples I make for lunch are flashing in front of my eyes. Veggies are great! And maybe, like my fantasy heroes, you’ll be inspired to try one this week. If you do, tag me! I’d love to see what you make.
I hope that was fun””and maybe gave you some ideas for your next meal. I know I’m hungry, and since it’s five o’clock here, I’m off to break into that vegan wine. Want to connect? You can find me and my links at edebell.com. And you can check out my upcoming epic fantasy saga Diamondsongthere too!
Author: E.D.E. Bell was born in the year of the fire dragon during a Cleveland blizzard. With an MSE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, three wonderful children, and nearly two decades in Northern Virginia and Southwest Ohio developing technical intelligence strategy, she now applies her magic to the creation of genre-bending fantasy fiction in Ferndale, Michigan, where she is proud to be part of the Detroit arts community. A passionate vegan and enthusiastic denier of gender rules, she feels strongly about issues related to human equality and animal compassion. She is the author of the Shkode trilogy and the editor of the new anthology, As Told by Things. Her latest book Escape (Diamondsong Book 1) is available for preorder now! You can follow her adventures and social media at edebell.com.
Everyone says that indie publishing is the wave of the future. Avoiding gatekeepers, who are often prejudiced against particular ideas or demographics, and putting your work out there to see if it will sink or swim on its own, puts the power (and the money) back in the hands of the writers. I had an unusual idea and format that I realized would have difficulty finding a home because of its experimental nature, so I though I would give it a try.
Here’s the problem: It’s not free.
Amazon and others try to make you believe it’s free, but only if you want to give away a significant royalty chunk, and only if you don’t hire an editor (bad,) don’t hire a cover designer (worse,) don’t hire a formatter (fine if you have lots of time on your hands and are handy with computer programs; awful if not,) and don’t do any marketing or ever buy a copy to sell to your friends or at cons. If you do decide to go for it without any resources, people will dismiss your cover as tacky, your prose as terrible, and no one is ever going to see it in the sea of newly available titles anyway.
Not to mention there’s still the whiff of vanity publishing about it, so no matter how good you are, or how well you do, some people will never take you seriously.
If you want to succeed at indie publishing, you have to be seen in the vast herd of new titles appearing every day. It takes money. That’s fine if you can afford it, but I found it daunting. So I asked myself, “How can I publish a book without defeating the purpose? How can I find capital that doesn’t eliminate my bottom line?”
I launched a Kickstarter to bring my Wyrd West stories to print. I budgeted for cover design, formatting, editing, marketing and stock purchase. And I asked my readers to contribute.
The response was better than I could have hoped. The Kickstarter was successful. The end result was a beautiful, professional book I had every right to be proud of, many of which were going directly to the readers that funded them.
But can this said to be truly self-published? I don’t think it can. This is a new way of doing things, in which readers choose to fund what they want to read. It puts the power directly in their hands. As it should be.
Even the backing of the Big 5 doesn’t guarantee a book’s success. It has to find an audience. It has to have resonance with the people who read it. Readers aren’t going to fund bad ideas, and if you’re a bad writer, they’re not going to support you more than once. So rather than being vetted by small groups of people on the top of a big pyramid of status and business acumen, Crowdpublished projects are vetted directly by the public.
As a writer, here’s a look at the differences I’ve found between being traditionally, independently, or Crowdpublished:
Traditional Publishing
Indie Publishing
Crowdpublishing
Getting the Book Published in the First Place
You may not be able to get a publisher interested. Chances are you will have a long wait. If you try something that’s too far outside of the mainstream in subject or presentation, don’t count on it. The publisher covers all publishing expenses and pays you a royalty.
You can get the book published whenever you want. You are entirely responsible for expenses & getting people to read it. On the other hand, you get to keep a larger share of the royalty.
If your audience will sustain your idea, you can publish the book whenever you want, and you know they, at least, will read it. Chances are they’ll get their friends to read it too, because they wouldn’t have invested if they didn’t think it was a good idea. If you’ve budgeted correctly, the expenses of printing some of your books, at any rate, will be covered. You receive indie royalties.
Editing
A professional editor who works for the publishing house will be provided to edit for you. Sometimes this leads to personality conflicts, but ultimately, it is the editor’s job to make your book into a marketable product, and that’s what they’re going to try to do.
There are good editors and bad editors out there in the indie world, and you have to pay one. Some charge very good rates, others higher ones. Unless you’re dealing with a professional service with multiple editors, rate doesn’t necessarily indicate quality. However, most writers have no idea what makes a good editor, and it’s not just whether they can copyedit your spelling mistakes. A good editor will also be trying to make your book into a marketable product. That means they have to know what that looks like, and in my experience, the vast majority of indie editors haven’t a clue.
You have all the innate disadvantages of indie editing, except that you can budget for that in your crowdfunder, so you can spring for the professional firm or someone you trust right away.
Cover Design
Your publisher decides on the cover, but will pay artists & designers to make it for you.
You have the final say over the cover, but either you have to figure out Cover Design 101 or pay someone to do it well.
You have the final say over the cover, but your readers cover the expense of creating it.
Creative Control
Your publisher has the final word on what will & will not go in the book.
You have complete creative control.
You have creative control ““ provided your readers will support your idea.
Marketing & Promotion
Your publisher expects you to do more of this than they used to, but they will still do a lot of it for you. They’ll market to bookstores and contact radio shows and podcasts. You will still be expected to use your own platform (especially online) to market, and you’ll probably still have to pay for your own book tour. They will decide much of how you and your book should be presented to the public.
You are entirely responsible for the way you market yourself and your book. You’re also entirely responsible for the expenses. You probably don’t know as much about doing it as a professional publicist does, so there will be a lot of trial and error. Often, some of the places you’d like to promote to won’t talk to you because you don’t have a publisher’s clout.
You still have many of the inherent problems of indie marketing. The exceptions are a) you are NOT entirely responsible for expenses (you can budget for that,) and b) a crowdfunding outlet is already a marketing platform. If you succeed at your goal, some shows who wouldn’t have talked to you as an indie will, because it’s a heartwarming success story and it’s apparent you do have an audience.
I realize that Crowdpublishing is a bit like being PBS instead of MSNBC. You know that you have an audience. Although it might not be as easy for you to reach them as it is for corporations, that audience is dedicated enough to supporting your work that they are willing to ante up, sight-unseen. It’s “Funded in part by readers like you.”
It’s a godsend for SFF story markets. Many respected pro- and semi-pro markets use the Crowdpublishing model, including Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, the entire EscapePod family, Third Flatiron, and more. And most SFF writers I know use the Crowdpublishing model, at least as far as setting up a Patreon, whether they’re just starting out or just shy of the New York Times bestseller list. I think this should be a point of pride.
I don’t believe that indie-publishing deserves its “lesser” reputation, because garbage gets published in all fields, and a big imprint is by no means a guarantee of quality. But I think when we’re asked if our project was self-published, we should smile and say, “No, it was Crowdpublished.” I think it’s a selling point.
I believe that any path a writer takes to success is a good one. Some people are really successful in the traditional or indie-publishing models, and regardless of which path they’ve taken, it’s hard. These are accomplishments worth taking pride in. But I think we should start thinking of Crowdpublishing as a third path within the literary market. There’s traditional publishing, and indie-publishing, and Crowdpublishing.
If you’re a writer who produces your own books, or a magazine editor, and you have a Kickstarter, GoFundMe or Patreon for the purpose, your work isn’t indie-published; it’s Crowdpublished. It’s not self-funded, or funded by shareholders; it’s funded by the public. And I think we should start talking about it that way.
Diane Morrison in an emerging neo-pro writer who just successfully ran a Kickstarter to publish her book, Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West, available this month. She’s also appearing in Third Flatiron’s Terra! Tara! Terror!. This fall she will be offering a class through the Rambo Academy on finding time to write when you have none. Under her pen name Sable Aradia, she is a traditionally-published non-fiction author and blogger. She lives in Vernon, BC, Canada and she manages the SFWA YouTube channel. Right now, she’s doing a giveaway to support her Patreon membership drive. You can catch her on Twitter as @SableAradia, which means she’s not writing when she should be.
While I am a sucker for fairytales and magic, one area of writing that I persistently search for is dystopian not-so-distant futuristic novels. Something plausible, and terrifying, that engulfs the reader in the imaginative, but hope-it-won’t-happen world characters live in.
Erin Carrougher lives in the Seattle area and was more than suited to write about the region as the location of her dystopian novel. She has a passion for storytelling and loves to envision worlds other than our own. Carrougher minored in Creative Writing and currently works as a Sales Manager, and enjoys cooking and the outdoors. Augland is Carrougher’s first novel.
Author: E.D.E. Bell was born in the year of the fire dragon during a Cleveland blizzard. With an MSE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, three wonderful children, and nearly two decades in Northern Virginia and Southwest Ohio developing technical intelligence strategy, she now applies her magic to the creation of 
