Sarena Ulibarri
  • Home
  • Publications
  • Editing
  • Blog
  • Free Ebook
  • Contact

Blog

Astra, the Falling Star published in KasmaSF

2/3/2017

0 Comments

 
My story "Astra, the Falling Star," a surreal sci-fi about two astronauts whose ship is destroyed while in orbit around an alien planet, has been published online by KasmaSF Magazine. KasmaSF publishes a new story each month, and I have the privilege of being their February author. They were nice enough to publish my apocalyptic Cassandra retelling "As Dust Rolls Toward the Mountains" a few years ago, and I'm thrilled they liked "Astra" as well. KasmaSF commissions original artwork by José Baetas for each story, which makes publication there extra special.

Here's the story's opening paragraph, and below that, the wonderful artwork José created after reading it.
I freefall, plummeting through an alien sky. Clouds obscure my vision. Tears and mucus smear across my helmet to obscure it even more. I shut my eyes—such fickle and sensitive sensory organs—and imagine the equations of the forces acting on my body. I try to rearrange their values: my version of praying, I suppose. But the laws of physics will not bend just to save my life.

Read More...
Picture
Speaking of artwork, I've recently joined Pinterest, and created a few boards that represent imagery from some of my forthcoming stories. I hope the images below will pique your interest enough to give the story a read. You can do that by clicking here. It's a short one, only about 3,000 words. And with luck, maybe I'll have a few more boards and a few more stories to share soon.

See the whole Pinterest Board by clicking here: "Astra, the Falling Star"
0 Comments

Release Day: Some Kind of Magic by Mary Ann Marlowe

1/31/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
Usually, I prefer to promote books on my blog that fall into the (broad) category of speculative fiction—it's what I write, it's what my company publishes, and it's what most (though certainly not all) of my writerly friends write. Mary Ann Marlowe's debut novel Some Kind of Magic is going to sit squarely on the "Contemporary Romance" or "Romantic Comedy" shelves, but I'm going to argue it's got a speculative slant to it. There's a bit of a "Love Potion #9" theme going on here, and a "what if?" question about just how powerful synthetic pheromones could be. And no matter whether I can call it speculative or not, I'm still going to pick up a copy, because it sounds freaking adorable.

Here's the description:

In this sparkling debut novel, Mary Ann Marlowe introduces a hapless scientist who's swept off her feet by a rock star—but is it love or just a chemical reaction?...

Biochemist Eden Sinclair has no idea that the scent she spritzed on herself before leaving the lab is designed to enhance pheromones. Or that the cute, grungy-looking guy she meets at a gig that evening is Adam Copeland. As in the Adam Copeland international rock god and object of lust for a million women. Make that a million and one. By the time she learns the truth, she s already spent the (amazing, incredible) night in his bed.
 
Suddenly Eden, who's more accustomed to being set up on disastrous dates by her mom, is going out with a gorgeous celebrity who loves how down-to-earth and honest she is. But for once, Eden isn't being honest. She can't bear to reveal that this overpowering attraction could be nothing more than seduction by science. And the only way to know how Adam truly feels is to ditch the perfume—and risk being ditched in turn.
 
Smart, witty, and sexy, Some Kind of Magic is an irresistibly engaging look at modern relationships: why we fall, how we connect, and the courage it takes to trust in something as mysterious and unpredictable as love.
Picture
Super cute, right?

Mary Ann Marlowe is part of the PitchWars 2014 cohort that I have been lucky enough to tag along with as so many of them grow and get published and continue to be absolutely amazing, supportive people.

Some Kind of Magic is out now in paperback and Kindle from Kensington Books. Happy Book Birthday!

Find Your Copy of Some Kind of Magic:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble


About the Author

Picture
Website | Facebook | Twitter

Some Kind of Magic
is Mary Ann Marlowe’s first novel. When not writing, she works by day as a computer programmer/DBA. She spent ten years as a university-level French professor, and her resume includes stints as an au pair in Calais, a hotel intern in Paris, a German tutor, a college radio disc jockey, and a webmaster for several online musician fandoms, plus she has a second-degree black belt. She has lived in twelve states and three countries and loves to travel. She now lives in central Virginia where she is hard at work on her second novel. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.maryannmarlowe.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

1 Comment

Adventures in Zookeeping Release Party

11/1/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Last weekend was MileHiCon, one of my favorite local SFF conventions. I was on a couple of panels this year, but the real highlight of the convention was the release party and reading for ADVENTURES IN ZOOKEEPING, an anthology that includes my story "The Fourth Lemur." This is the second of the charity anthologies (all proceeds go back to MileHiCon) put together by Sam Knight that I was lucky enough to be included in. In fact, last year after releasing SIDEKICKS, Sam Knight asked for suggestions for the next anthology, and I was the one who suggested the title/theme "Adventures in Zookeeping."

On Saturday, we gathered in the ConSuite for a dual release party along with the contributors of another anthology, DOMESTICATED VELOCIRAPTORS, and then we ventured downstairs to one of the panel rooms where we had the chance to read our stories to the room. For many of the authors, this was their first time doing a public reading, but everyone did a fantastic job. I tried to break the tension a little bit by standing up on my chair to read, rather than going up to the front like everyone else.

Picture
Adventures in Zookeeping and Domesticated Velociraptors authors and fans mingle in the ConSuite
Picture
Listening raptly as Adventures in Zookeeping authors read their stories aloud
Picture
Picture
Picture
Ever wonder how much fun it would be to be a zoo keeper if your wards included the strange, the supernatural, the not-of-this-earth? This collection of speculative fiction ranges from were-lemurs to a breeding program for a Lovecraftian horror. Edited by Sam Knight. This anthology evolved from a panel at MileHiCon in Denver, Colorado, titled "So You Want To Be in an Anthology?" The stories contained within were contributed by attendees of that panel. All net proceeds are donated to support MileHiCon.
So those "were-lemurs" mentioned in the book description? Yeah, that's my story. Except, maybe it's not that simple. Maybe there's more to that weird, somewhat human-looking lemur that shows up in the zoo, maybe that bite the zookeeper got isn't doing exactly what she fears it's doing.

Next week I plan to interview some of the other authors from this fun anthology, so please stop by to learn more about their stories, and pick up a copy of ADVENTURES IN ZOOKEEPING when you have the chance. It has some very fun stories in it, and it helps support an excellent science fiction and fantasy convention that has always made me feel at home.
0 Comments

Snowpocalypse: Tales of the End of the World Release!

9/6/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Many thanks to Scott Woodward and Clint Collins of Black Mirror Press for including my story "Breath Across the Mouth of a Bottle" in their debut anthology, SNOWPOCALYPSE: TALES OF THE END OF THE WORLD. It's available now from Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

The full table of contents:

"White" by Eddie Newton
"The Last Winter Buck" by Matthew Shoen
"The Wind Whispers, 'Witiko'" by Jennifer Loring
"Dead England" by DJ Tyrer

"The Snowman" by Llanwyre Laish
"Snoe" by Mark Lynch
"The Snow Woman" by Susan McCauley
"All These Things We Didn’t Believe" by John Palisano
"Thaw" by David Sakmyster

"Locusts in the Snow" by Richard Barber
"Breath Across the Mouth of a Bottle" by Sarena Ulibarri
"Snow and Ashes" by Zoe McAuley

"Let There Be Light" by Walt Socha
"The Snow" by Cheryl Pearson
"St. Michael’s Parish" by Nicole Shelton
"A Chill Subterfuge" by Barry Rosenberg
"Snow Day!" by Clint Mesle

Picture
I look forward to seeing how other writers interpreted the theme of this anthology. Here's a brief excerpt of my story, "Breath Across the Mouth of a Bottle," which is part Weird Horror, part Science Fiction.
My dad and my cousin Brooke were fighting about the thermostat just before the power went out. Rather than weather the blizzard alone, I had abandoned my apartment and come to my dad’s house, and had convinced Brooke to do the same.

“You know what a crazy survivalist he is,” I told her. “We’re safer there than anywhere.”

He did have a stockpile of food and wood, but even in the midst of a blizzard, Dad kept the house only slightly warmer than a walk-in refrigerator. He’d done that my whole life, and though I didn’t like it, I was used to it. Brooke spent the whole first two days we were snowed in trying to get him to turn it up.

“Great,” Brooke yelled when the power shut off. “Now we get to freeze our asses off even more for the next two days.”

Only, the snow piled over the roof, and we were snowed in for two weeks.
And look! Black Mirror Press made this awesome creepy book trailer. Check it out:
0 Comments

Starward Tales Release!

8/22/2016

0 Comments

 
The anthology STARWARD TALES is now available, featuring my science fiction Cassandra retelling, "As Dust Rolls Toward the Mountains." STARWARD TALES  is a collection of short stories, poems, and visual art retelling legends, myths, and fairy tales as science fiction, published by Manawaker Studio.
Picture
Below is an excerpt of my story, "As Dust Rolls Toward the Mountains." This story was originally published in Kasma SF Magazine in April 2014, and I'm thrilled that editor CB Droege thought it was a good fit to reprint in STARWARD TALES. It will be a real treat to receive the physical copy of this book (though of course, it's also available in ebook). Apparently there will also be an audiobook version? I'll post about that when more details are available.
Cassie went blind the day before the asteroid struck.  There had been no warnings from NASA or the White House, just as Cassie's loss of sight had not been foreshadowed by blurriness or headaches.  Once blind, though, Cassie warned our mountain town about the asteroid.  No one believed her, of course.

"It's projection," my brother said at the dinner table.  "Blindness is the worst thing that could happen to her, so she's coping by imagining the worst thing that could happen to the rest of us."
           
My brother and Cassie had dated in high school, until he left to study psychology at the state university.  Now they worked together at the grocery store on Main Street.  He'd been there when her sight disappeared.
           
"Right in the middle of a sale," he said.  "She was handing Mrs. Ross her change and all of a sudden she dropped the money and started feeling around."
           
My father took a second helping of mashed potatoes.
           
"See now, if you'd stayed here and married her, that would be your problem.  Probably have to bring up blind kids too.  I always knew something wasn't right with that girl."
           
"Is she okay?" I asked.
           
"She's home now," my brother said.  "Her parents don't want visitors.  Especially after she started with all that crazy talk about the asteroid."
           
But we knew the next day it wasn't crazy talk after all.
If you pick up a copy of STARWARD TALES, please leave an honest review! Books without reviews tend to sink into Amazon's black holes. Help keep this one sailing through space?
0 Comments
Forward>>

    Archives

    December 2020
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016

    Categories

    All
    Books By Friends
    Clarion
    Corgis
    Cover Art
    Cover Reveal
    Editing
    Fantasy
    Fiction
    Film Analysis
    Giveaway
    Guest Post
    Horror
    Interview
    Lgbt
    Paranormal Romance
    Release Day
    Reviews
    Science Fiction
    Solarpunk
    Story Behind The Story
    Writing
    Young Adult

    RSS Feed


  • Home
  • Publications
  • Editing
  • Blog
  • Free Ebook
  • Contact