All posts by Katie Jane Gallagher

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About Katie Jane Gallagher

Author of the Beauty and Her Alien series and Specter.

Short Tuesday #25: “Spore” by Amanda Downum

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This week I returned to Nightmare Magazine to read the short story “Spore,” which was published in a female Lovecraftian horror anthology. You can read it for free here...

“Spore” was a quick read, and I was interested in the premise of a purported fungal infection that is influencing its hosts in strange and unanticipated ways. I’ve thought of including some sort of magical fungus in the sequel to The Gold in the Dark, so I’m always psyched to see tangential ideas in fiction.

The language in this piece is really beautiful. Settings are detailed in a way that makes the piece come to life.

Condensation drips through the weave of the metal table onto the pavement. People pass us on the sidewalk, bright summer colors and chattering voices. Hands touch arms to punctuate conversation; shoulders brush; a couple rests their hands in each other’s back pockets.

I do wish we’d been given more of a glimpse into the further aftermath of ingesting the mushrooms, especially in terms of further physical effects and mental urges. I also don’t get a Lovecraftian feel from the piece, despite the anthology it’s housed in.

Nevertheless, I liked the detail-work in the piece and the MC’s personal struggles with her own personality as it relates to belief, so I’d recommend this story.

Fairy Tale Romance: My Passionate Love Affair With Eloisa James’s Books

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Those of you who have been around a while might know that I’m on a quest of sorts to get to know the romance genre better. I was pretty sure that Eloisa James would be an author whose style I’d like, so with that in mind, I picked up some of her fairy tale-inspired romances.

Oh. My. God. I can’t get enough of them. I never used to really understand the addictive nature of the romance genre, but I get it now. So I thought I’d give some quick reviews for the three I’ve read so far. I will undoubtedly be reading more from James in the near future, and I recommend her books for anyone who is interested in the genre but isn’t exactly sure where to start. Just so you know, these are all very loose fairy tale retellings—they have a fairly whimsical tone and are not at all fantasy.

The Duke Is Mine is inspired by “The Princess and the Pea.” Just like in the original tale, the heroine arrives at a manor one stormy night soaked through to the bone. In James’s version, her destined duke greets her at the door and is immediately wildly attracted to her—a sodden gown clinging to every curve will do that. 😉 Too bad she’s engaged to a simpleton and is really only visiting the duke’s estate as her sister’s chaperone; it’s the sister who is being tested as the possible duchess-to-be.

I really liked this book; the female MC is sassy yet honorable. I’m a sucker for sister relationships in stories, and this one is really cute. It also handles neurological disorders in a sensitive, sensible matter. The duke love interest has an Asperger’s-like disorder, and the MC’s betrothed, who is mentally handicapped due to a temporary loss of oxygen at birth, is depicted respectfully. Out of the three here, I’d say this book is great for a first impression of James’s work.

Once Upon a Tower is of course inspired by the tale of Rapunzel. Of the three books of James that I’ve read, this one is the most “realistic.” The female and male MC are both quite young and sexually inexperienced. The chemistry between them is very strong, but when they get married, their inexperience in the bedroom introduces major tension into the relationship; I don’t know that I’ve ever read a more realistic and raw depiction of a young couple’s sexual struggles. I even read their first unfortunate sexcapade out loud to my husband. His response? “Oh, damn.“

So this is a more serious read than the other two here, and it will really pull at your heart strings. I’d also recommend it to any classical music fans out there; the female MC is an expert cellist, and James has really done her homework in this department.

I’m not sure exactly how to put this in a blog-appropriate manner. Umm… When Beauty Tamed the Beast threw me into a strong romantic tizzy. I knew, in a clinical sort of way, that romance books had the ability to do that—but didn’t ever really expect it to happen to me.

Well, we all get proven wrong sometimes. This is a book that will please female readers and indirectly please their romantic partners. You catch my drift? ;D I’d give this ten out of five stars if I could.

Have you read any great romance books lately? Do you tend more towards contemporary, historical, or paranormal? Leave your recommendations down below!

Short Tuesday #24: “More Real Than Him” by Silvia Park

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This week I returned to Tor.com and read “More Real Than Him” by Silvia Park. I’m loving how there are so many works that have been released lately with a Korean pop culture thread. (Hart & Seoul is waiting for me in my ARC pile as I type this!) You can read the short story for free here…

I really enjoyed this short story; it was a fun, quick read. The premise is that a young woman works as a programmer at a robotics company and drunkenly steals a robot from her company one night. She’s a mega-fan of a Korean actor; saddened by the news that he has enlisted in the mandatory two-year military service, she decides to craft the robot in his likeness, modeling its personality after the actor’s famous roles.

This is a great story for any fans of Black Mirror or Ex Machina. It delves into the endless philosophical questions revolving around AI and robot-human relationships. At what point is AI living? How do humans stay “socialized” in a world where robots are an easy band aid for companionship? What’s the fallout when robots are indistinguishable from humans? And so on and so forth.

The story flowed well, with some really lyrical language, and the underlying themes of the piece are fascinating. I’d recommend it for anyone who has an interest in Asian culture and sci-fi.

Chapter Sixteen of The Gold in the Dark and a Writing Update!

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Illustration courtesy of Ally Grosvenor, as always.

The sixteenth chapter of The Gold in the Dark is out! This chapter marks the beginning of Part Two, and it’s a good ‘un—aren’t you just dying to know what that gross thing is in the chapter illustration? New chapters, complete with brilliant chapter illustrations courtesy of Ally Grosvenor, release every other Sunday at 11 AM EST (and sometimes earlier). You can get started on the series right here.

These past two weeks have just been steady work on the Beauty and the Beast and Aliens WIP. I had to do a rewrite of the second chapter for major issues—the emotionality of the chapter was totally wrong, and I wanted to fix it before progressing. It’s funny how something can feel totally right when you get it down on paper at first, then a critique from a writing partner can totally change your view of things the next minute. So oh well, it was time to go back to the drawing board and give Chapter Two another shot… but it’s better now.

I also have found a new writing service, Dabble, that I can’t shut up about. As I mentioned in my tech tools of the trade post, I kind of hate Google, so I wanted to find a way to move away from drafting in Google Docs. Scrivener unfortunately won’t work for me for the time being as I need cloud capability, so that led me to Dabble—and I love it. It has online capability, a gorgeous GUI, word count tracking, dark theme, plotting tools… Honestly, I can’t speak highly enough about it. Thanks, Instagram ads—without you, I never would have found out about Dabble, and also about that adorable T-rex necklace that I impulse bought last week. 😉

That’s basically it! Hard at work on drafting, so that I can have the book out hopefully by next July. Have a great rest of your weekend, and enjoy Chapter Sixteen. ❤

Lovely War by Julie Berry

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This is one of those books with a cover that just called to me. (It’s also one of those covers embracing the white-uppercase-sans-serif-with-stuff-over-it trend.) But still, I went into Lovely War a bit trepidatious—I’m not the biggest historical fiction fan, and I spent a good portion of my time in school history classes daydreaming about being elsewhere.

Well, there was no reason to fear; this book swept me off my feet in a major way. I’d heard some people be confused about the premise, and it is a bit odd, I’ll agree. The book starts off in World War Two times with Aphrodite—yes, the Aphrodite. She, along with some of her other friends from the Greek pantheon, narrates a gripping story from World War One about the intersection of love and war to her aggrieved husband, Hephaestus. He’s caught her cheating on him with Ares, and Aphrodite knows exactly the right tale to tell to explain the situation.

I’ll admit that the Greek god framework does feel a little bit like the leaning tower of Pisa; it’s upright, but some tugging this way or that would cause the whole thing to topple over. However, the love story Aphrodite spins for Hephaestus and the readers is one for the ages. This is a captivating tale that literally moved me to tears, and that is a true once-in-a-blue-moon happening. Berry’s narration is gorgeous; quick chapters and lovable characters will have you make quick work of this 480-page tome.

I’d argue that this is another case of “is it really YA?” (Hmm, sounds like an interesting game show.) It’s certainly being marketed in the YA section, and the tone is perfect for the YA crowd, but the main characters are older as far as I can tell. I’m not exactly sure what their ages were, to be honest—maybe it was mentioned, but I certainly missed it, so I’d guess they’re somewhere from eighteen to early twenties. (“Maybe,” hisses my inner conspiracy theorist, “Berry purposely didn’t mention the main characters’ ages so we can’t get into this whole debate again!”)

Anyway, a good book is a good book, so maybe we should just get past the whole is-it-or-isn’t-it question. I wholeheartedly recommend Lovely War, and I dare you to read it without getting watery in the eyes.

Short Tuesday #23: “To Build a Fire” by Jack London

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This week I took a detour from the usual weird short fiction and went back to a classic. I think the last time I read “To Build a Fire” was in middle school English—I have distinct memories of some of the kids in class thinking the expression “like a chicken with its head cut off” was just hilarious. You can read the short story for free here…

I really enjoyed this short story! If you’ve never read it, the premise is that a man and his dog are traveling through the Yukon in temperatures of seventy-five below. The MC is quite arrogant, and his actions lead him to have problems starting a fire. It’s a classic man versus nature tale, where you’re just waiting for the foolhardy MC to get his comeuppance. I already knew what was going to happen, so basically just spent the first bit waiting for everything to go to pieces.

Really I read this because I’ve been working on my WIP, and the MC confronts a dangerous blizzard early on in the book. It’s nice to see how a master storyteller like London tackles a similar topic, in terms of the observations and details. It was also just a nostalgic read; this story may be more than a hundred years old, but it definitely holds up, despite one instance of racial language that would never fly in the here and now. Just as I’m not going to dismiss Lovecraft for the infamously named cat in “The Rats in the Walls,” so too am I not going to dismiss London. Hope that makes sense, though others might feel differently.

Anyway, I recommend this short story and had a fun time reading it, even though it’s very different from the other short fiction I’ve been reading lately. It’s the kind of short story that really sticks with you once you’ve read it, so for that I can only give it five stars. 🙂

ARC: The Warehouse by Rob Hart

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Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for sending me a free advanced reader copy of this book for an honest review. The Warehouse debuts August 20th.

Let’s cut to the chase: this is a book about Amazon. If you’ve ever entertained the question of what the world would look like if Amazon continues going great guns and secures a bit more political power, then this is a must-read. This is a near-future dystopia, where devastating global warming and Black Friday massacres have ensured that consumers are unwilling to leave their houses—basically ever. Enter Cloud, who will drone-ship every product imaginable to your doorstep in the blink of an eye. Their workers live in massive company towns, where you get paid in Cloud credits, eat Cloud burgers, and sleep in Cloud-issued apartments. And if you don’t want to buy into the system, too bad, because unemployment is sky high, so how else you gonna make a buck, bro?

Enter Paxton and Zinnia, two new recruits to Cloud. Paxton is an entrepreneur whose small business dreams were squashed under the weight of pressure by Cloud to lower his production costs. Zinnia is a corporate spy on the most dangerous mission of her life: to figure out how Cloud is really producing their energy. Paxton has a job on the security team, while Zinnia only manages to secure a lowly picker role. If you have any sort of plot intuition, you can kinda see where things are headed from there, and it’s a wild, compulsive read that was hard to put down.

Listen, I like Amazon well enough. To give a personal example, my book is on Amazon in the KDP program, and I truly admire the innovation they have brought to the publishing industry by introducing the Kindle and an ebook marketplace to the world. Believe it or not, at least in the publishing sphere, Amazon has been great for the little guy. Print-on-demand and easy ebook distribution are threatening to topple the long-established gatekeepers of publishing, i.e., agents and publishers, allowing authors to be their own boss and have total control over their final product.

But that’s not to say that everything Amazon does smells of roses; you don’t get to that level of success without trampling over others. So if you’re a fan of dystopian fiction, I would definitely pick this up—it’s a fast, thrilling read that will ironically probably be topping Amazon’s book rankings.

Writer’s Corner: Tech Tools of the Trade

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This last year has been one big bookish whirl—after I finished putting final edits on my second book, I came to a pretty earth-shattering realization that I was wholly disillusioned with the publishing industry and didn’t want to pursue a trad publishing route after all. When I opted for the indie route, I knew there would be a big learning curve to starting what is essentially a small business. What I didn’t anticipate was how integral some websites would become to my workflow. This post definitely is not just for indie authors, but for anyone who is trying to make things happen in the digital space. I’ll do another post soon specifically about Instagram apps, as well as about the publishing industry companies I chose to partner with (aggregate distributors, etc.).

Canva

I adore Canva; it’s an easy and intuitive way to make professional and enticing graphics. There’s not many graphics on this website that didn’t go through Canva first, from my blog header to my logo to the cover of the Specter free short story. I adore that I can use it on my phone so that I can easily download and upload Instagram posts. Also, Canva provides a great printing service; it’s how I printed my business cards and some posters for Specter promo. The products shipped fast and the print quality is great.

Befunky

Please don’t laugh at me—I use Befunky primarily for resizing graphics. I know, I know… there are way easier ways to do this, even within WordPress itself, but somehow I always have a hard time remembering how. Befunky just works with my wonky brain, for some reason, so it’s my dedicated resizer.

Linktree

Linktree is what I use for that crucial one link you get for your Instagram bio. They make everything look professional, and it’s free. What else could a girl ask for?

Google Drive

This one kind of pains me, because at the core of it I hate Google. I think they’re creepy and power-hungry, so it pains me that I find Google Drive so damn useful. The easily accessible storage speaks for itself, and I love that Docs and Sheets are so intuitive and that I can invite other people to view documents and leave comments. Due to having to write on multiple devices, I can regrettably no longer easily draft with Scrivener, so Google Docs is what I’m currently using. I guess this is the one service on here that I’d like to replace, if simply because I don’t like to support Google as a company… maybe Reedsy or Office Online? I’ll have to look into it, but for the time being, there is no denying that Google Drive helps me get work done easily.

Pacemaker

Pacemaker has been a recent discovery, again due to the fact that I’m drafting again and can’t use Scrivener and its word count features. For a word count tool, it is extremely customizable, and I love how it shows your progress on a chart.

Google Keep

Google Keep is another of those pesky Google apps that I use every single day with a tinge of regret. It’s meant for keeping lists, of course, but I’ve found myself using it in surprising ways—for example, to keep a list of my commonly used Instagram hashtags handy for pasting into each post. If you’re a person who likes lists, Keep is where it’s at.

3D Book Cover Creator

This tool totally saved me from having to manually cut out the white space from around a 3D cover rendering. It is so easy to use, and there are many different options to choose from in terms of paperback, hardback, phone, Kindle, etc. I have found that it is a little bit buggy at times (one time I went to download my cover, only to find that they’d sent me somebody else’s!), but I still always get the graphic I want with a little fiddling around.

What tools do you use for your blog or business? Leave your favorites down below!

Short Tuesday #22: “Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang

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This week I went back to Tor.com to take a look at another short story by JY Yang. I read another short story by Yang earlier this year and LOVED it, so was very interested to read something else by this author. You can read the short story for free here…

So some of you may not know this, but I majored in Chinese language and literature in college and I’ve actually spent a lot of time in China. I no longer have a day job that requires me to use Mandarin, so I’m growing rustier by the day, but suffice it to say that I know a lot about the Chinese language and culture. Lo and behold, this story has a lot of Chinese songs and poems interspersed throughout, along with many details that draw upon Chinese culture, so this added a fun element to the piece for me. I will say, though, that some translations for the Chinese text could go a long way in bridging the cultural gap for an English-speaking audience. I can understand not including a translation for a language with many English cognates, such as Spanish or French, but Chinese is decidedly not that.

I ultimately had a difficult time connecting with this story. It’s another one of those short stories where there is a ton of worldbuilding, but in the “thrown in the deep end of the pool” style. In media res-style details are tough enough in longer works, let alone in short fiction. All the details, with very little seeded explanation, made the whole narrative feel ungrounded. I also think this would be a doubly challenging story for readers who do not have any sort of background in Chinese; there are no translations provided for the Chinese text, and many Chinese cultural and historical touchpoints are thrown in without explanation. For example:

Only the starmages have the ability to defeat the Starmage General. But their suits have a limiter that stops them from performing the Seventy Two Transformations, and that is under the Starmage General’s control.

In the above quote, this was the first time I was hearing anything about the “Seventy Two Transformations.” In fact, this is the only time the transformations are mentioned in the entire story. However, a quick Google search revealed that the transformations are performed by a character in Journey to the West, a Chinese literary classic. I happen to think it’s cool that these referential details are included, but a little seeded explanation or context would be appreciated.

I also don’t understand why the author chose to put the whole piece in second POV. It’s a bold move that didn’t seem to add much to the story, and I’m curious to know the rationale behind the decision.

Whew, Short Tuesday has gone on a bit longer than I anticipated! To sum up, this was an interesting read, especially for someone with an interest in Chinese language and culture, but there were many aspects that took away from the story as a whole.

Chapter Fifteen of The Gold in the Dark and a Writing Update!

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Illustration courtesy of the lovely Ally Grosvenor, as always!

The fifteenth chapter of The Gold in the Dark is out! This chapter marks the end of Part One, but no worries—the next chapter will release on time in two weeks. New chapters, complete with brilliant chapter illustrations courtesy of Ally Grosvenor, release every other Sunday at 11 AM EST.

Lots of exciting things are in the works here at KJG Productions! I know a lot of people find it hard or annoying to read a book on a website, so to make The Gold in the Dark easier to read I’m going to be releasing Part One in mobi, epub, and pdf file formats. It will take me a little bit to pull everything together, so we’re looking at an end of September or early October release date for that.

Ooh, look how shiny.

Some other fun news is that Specter was awarded five stars by Indies Today! That means I get to throw this cool badge up everywhere. 😀 We’re a month past Specter’s release at this point, so promo is winding to a close, but if this is the first time you’re hearing about the book, just keep scrolling; I’ve thrown the blurb and the cover down below. It’s at a cool 4.6 rating on Goodreads and four and a half stars on Amazon right now. 🙂

I’ve been spending the last couple weeks in drafting mode. The Beauty and the Beast and Aliens WIP is really fun to write. I’m not going to mask that it’s been slow-going… I’m already knees-deep in a Chapter Two rewrite right now. I know a lot of people will think it’s strange to be rewriting a chapter so early on in the process, but I’m an edit-as-I-go type of writer. Is that what most professional writers recommend? No. Does it work for me? Yes—and it has a lot to do with the fact that my very opinionated husband serves as my “alpha reader.” I’m thinking of putting up a post soon about why I like having an alpha reader—anyone interested in that, I wonder?

Last thing I want to mention is that in the process of drafting I’ve discovered a useful new tool! I’m having to use Google Docs to draft this book, not Scrivener, and I haven’t been able to find any decent word count tracker for Google Docs. So that led me to Pacemaker, which is a tool specifically for anyone who needs to track their words. It has a lot of functionality and options, so I’m finding it really useful.

All right, that’s all I’ve got for now in terms of writing updates. Have a good rest of your weekend and enjoy Chapter Fifteen. ❤

Blurb

Horror aficionado Lanie Adams should be thrilled when two eighties-era ghosts materialize in her bedroom. Yet after a fainting incident unbecoming of a horror nerd, she would rather her haunting just go away—the ghosts’ distorted, waterlogged voices and ice-cold auras are more terrifying than any movie. Enlisting the help of Ryan, an entirely-too-cute stoner, she makes it her mission to put the spirits stalking her to rest.

Some sleuthing reveals that their sleepy Connecticut town is host to a shadowy, decades-old conspiracy. If Lanie wants to say a final goodbye to her ghosts, she’ll need to keep digging. But it’s important to tread carefully. The culprit is still in town—and they’ll stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

Specter is available for purchase at any book retailer or from Hidden Bower Press. Even independent bookstores should be able to preorder Specter—and you can even request your local library order a physical or ebook copy! I love libraries, so making the book available everywhere was important to me in my publishing decisions. So please consider picking up a copy or adding it to your Goodreads TBR!