Quarter Share

Posted on by Nathan Lowell

The Golden Age of Sail has Returned — in the Year 2352

When his mother dies in a flitter crash, eighteen-year-old Ishmael Horatio Wang must find a job with the planet company or leave the system–and NerisCo isn’t hiring. With credits running low, and prospects limited, he has just one hope…to enlist for two years with a deep space commercial freighter. Ishmael, who only rarely visited the Neris Orbital, and has never been off-planet alone before, finds himself part of an eclectic crew sailing a deep space leviathan between the stars.

Join the crew of the SC Lois McKendrick, a Manchester built clipper as she sets solar sails in search of profit for her company and a crew each entitled to a share equal to their rating.

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Hello, World!

Posted on by Nathan Lowell 15 Comments

Folks who know me from podcasting might not know that I’m a teacher. Listeners who know me from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper might not know about Tales from the Lammas Wood. Some of you may know me as a teacher or as an expert in web accessibility or … well, you get the idea.

Hello, World. Glad you stopped by to see what’s happening here.

Fantasy

Posted on by Nathan Lowell 5 Comments

In 2009, my friend Mur Lafferty challenged me to complete NaNoWriMo in half a month. For the un-initiated, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and it falls in November each year. To win, write at least 50,000 words of a new extended work of fiction starting at midnight on the morning of November 1 and ending at midnight in the evening of November 30. For most normal purposes, 50,000 words is a rather long novella or a rather short novel, but it’s a handy target and every year thousands of erstwhile novelists from around the globe pit themselves against their keyboards and the clock.

In 2007, I completed the first draft of South Coast in November and had the podcast out by Christmas. In 2008, I failed to break the 2,000 word mark because of day job conflicts–travel, new high-priority projects, etc. In 2009, I accepted Mur’s challenge and the result was the first draft of Ravenwood. The first of what I hope will be a new series of works set in a fantasy setting.

Why fantasy?

2009 was the year of The Challenge with NaNoWriMo. After I accepted the speed challenge from Mur, another friend challenged me to get out of my genre and write a fantasy work while a long time beta reader finally nailed me down to write a female lead character. Little did I know how much of a challenge it would be, or how much fun I’d have working in this new country.

Keeping with my idea of twisting tropes, I approached the Epic Quest Fantasy by first identifying the things I wanted to change. In the typical story, the kid leaves home to seek fame and fortune (or escape the boredom of the farm) and adventures across the land becoming a hero and gaining powers as they go. So, I wanted to tell the story of an older person on a quest to find a place to settle down and write her magnum opus — a book on the collected herb lore collected from a lifetime on the road. The result is Tanyth Fairport – a wandering herbalist in the autumn of her years in search of the last of the keepers of the Old Knowledge.

I had so much fun with this book, I can hardly wait to get back into the world.